Zero to Infinity
by McCree114
Summary: Louise's familiar summoning attempts to reach out and take Saito Hiraga as per usual except this time Saito is a sailor aboard the UNSC Infinity. Louise not only summons Saito but inadvertently takes the Infinity and some of her escorts to Halkeginia, changing the destiny of every intelligent life form there forever. T for language.
1. Infinity for the price of one

**A/N Hello readers, this here is my first story and attempt to delve into the fanfiction world after simply being a lurker for so long. I took interest in Familiar of Zero and it's fanfiction after reading the one and only Half Life crossover on here. After reading and reviewing so many other works I felt inspired to write a Halo crossover due to the lack of Halo crossovers of this type. I loved the stories where forces from Earth come to Halkeginia to show mages what commoners can do.**

**Anyway, read, follow and review. Any thoughts of yours about how to improve the story would be appreciated especially in these early stages or just post some ideas that you may have.**

**Here we go.**

* * *

**Chapter 1: Infinity for the price of one**

**Sol system, Earth 2558**

**UNSC Infinity, Bridge**

"All engine systems green, life support systems functioning normally, and shield generators are functioning at one hundred percent. New crewmembers are settling into theirs roles quite well, replacement weaponry and vehicles loaded, and the new Strident class frigates are docked in the internal hanger bays. Lastly, I'm sure you'll be glad to know that Lowell will be serving his special 5 alarm chili in the main mess hall later this afternoon Captain."

The Infinity's shipboard AI, Roland RLD 0205-4, finished his report to Captain Thomas J. Lasky. Lasky was wearing the standard officer BDU much like most of the other officers working on the bridge save for the few crewmen wearing their colored crew uniforms. Roland like most other AI assumed a unique avatar and personality, in his case Roland appeared as a small orange projection of a WWII era bomber pilot. Infinity's bridge was a very busy place usually, but even more so today given the current deployment onto their next mission. Officers were running between weapons and nav monitors making sure everything was in order. The room was mostly illuminated by the various screens and the main holographic projector in the center where Lasky was currently leaning over.

"Update, our escort vessels are in position and we're ready to move on your orders captain."

"Thank you Roland, inform the other ship captains that we set out in exactly 10 mikes." Lasky responded. The captain then activated the intercom and addressed the Infinity's crew.

"**Attention all hands, prep for slipspace jump, we will be depart on our mission shortly.**"

Lasky sighed; it felt like as soon as his ship returned from the operations on Requiem that he and his crew were already tasked with another mission.

Requiem.

He remembered Infinity's first foray into that damnable Forerunner planet, being a commander under Captain Del Rio. Remembered the ship was attacked by the Covenant Remnant and Prometheans, the scouting mission, and his reunion with Chief. It was something he had never expected, everyone thought the Chief was gone with him and Cortana never to be seen again. They uncovered the Didact's plans and the Composer, but Del Rio chose to abandon them on that planet just to save Infinity from a few scratches. Command wasn't too happy about him leaving the UNSC's most iconic Spartan and AI behind on a Forerunner planet full of hostiles. He knew ONI had been searching tirelessly for the other half of the ship Forward unto Dawn. When Rio was promptly removed from command of the ship they had awarded him a promotion to captain and was made the new captain of the Infinity. He was glad the first thing he could do with his new command of Infinity was to help the chief defeat the Didact when he appeared over Earth and attempted to compose all of humanity.

Chief wasn't the same after Cortana sacrificed herself to save Chief… the human race. Last time he saw Chief was when he talked with him on one the observation decks. Chief later disappeared completely off the radar, no one really knowing where he could have gone.

Then there was the second run in with Requiem. Command wanted to set up research bases on the surface but the presence of Jul 'Mdama complicated things, as well as having to harbor the criminal Dr. Halsey. The Forerunner artifact, which teleported Dr. Glassman and Spartan Thorne into enemy hands, had messed with Infinity's systems and led to the Promethean boarding of the ship to capture Halsey. When he was ordered to execute her commander Palmer had insisted on handling it herself, he tried to send the rest of fire team Majestic to save her in time but she was instead abducted by the Covies and likely assumed he had just wanted to kill her thanks to Palmer severely wounding her. Afterwards the only thing left was escaping Jul 'Mdama's trap as Requiem was sent on a crash course for the system's star.

And now after all of that the UNSC had plans to send Infinity on a diplomatic mission to oversee and protect a meeting of Sangheili and Jiralhanae diplomats while they negotiated a peace agreement to end the continuing hostilities between the two alien races.

Currently the Infinity was being escorted by several Autumn class heavy cruisers and Paris class heavy frigates. Additionally Infinity carried 10 Strident class heavy frigates inside her main structure. The current battle group was a force to be reckoned with.

"Roland, prepare to fire the slipspace drives. We're departing now."

"Aye Aye captain, I'll get right on it." Roland replied then his orange projection blinked out.

Lasky looked to the helmsman, another officer working on the bridge. "Lieutenant James, keep us on course for this outbound vector. Prepare for navigation in slipspace."

James turned away from the navigational console he was working on and addressed the captain. "Aye Aye captain, we're approaching Roland's final navpoint now."

Giving an affirmative nod to the helmsman Lasky used his data pad to contact Lieutenant Austen the ship's weapons officer. After tapping a few buttons on screen a live feed of Austen appeared.

"Captain Lasky to Lieutenant Austen, I need you make sure the sub vessels are ready to drop at a moment's notice. Also be sure that Marines are combat ready and ready to deploy at any time."

Austen gave a quick salute to the screen before asking. "Expecting trouble Captain? We are just babysitting some alien politicians after all."

Lasky rub the back of his head. "After this ship's recent history with all manner of threats internal and external I'd rather not take any chances this time."

"Aye Captain, I hear you. Last thing we need are some Brute and Elite bigwigs boarding the ship and talking our ears off with their politics. God knows everything in the Galaxy seems insistent on boarding this ship. Anyway, I'll get right on it sir, Austen out."

With that the video feed cut out and Lasky was again leaning over the holo table looking at the projection of Infinity and her escorts speeding towards the jump point. Lasky sat down in his chair and shut his eyes tightly while rubbing his temple.

"I have a feeling this is going to be one of those days." He grumbles to himself.

* * *

**Unknown planet xxxx[?]**

**Unknown location **

"Errgh. I just knew it was going to be one of those days."

A young noble girl quietly complained to herself about her current situation. Louise Francoise Le Blanc de La Valliere a strawberry blonde young woman was currently standing out in an open field along with her other classmates and teacher, Jean Colbert.

"Well done Miss Tabitha! A wind dragon, dragon familiars are not very common, very impressive." Mr. Colbert exclaimed proudly to Tabitha, the blunette class genius. She quietly returned to her place among her peers and began reading a book and seeming disinterested with everything else.

It was the annual spring time summoning ritual in which aspiring mages at the Tristan Academy of Magic would summon their very own familiars. Familiars are magical creatures who remain loyal companions to the mage that summoned them as well as help them in their daily duties as a mage, they are said to reflect the mages skill and power.

First that boorish Zerbst summons a rare fire salamander and now Tabitha summons a dragon. A dragon, for Brimir's sake how am I supposed to compete with that when the bar has already been set so high… that's if I can summon anything at all, Louise thought to herself already feeling defeated.

Her lack of confidence was not without merit, her experience at the academy and her attempts at becoming a mage was marred by failure after failure. While her bookwork and understanding of magic theory were remarkable, with her test scores even being better than Tabitha's at times, her practical use of magic left much to be desired. All attempts at actually using any form of elemental magic would result in explosions of varying size and destructive power, be it water, earth, fire, or wind. She had countless tutors growing up who tirelessly tried to find which elemental affinity was hers, but it seemed like she had none at all. Consequentially that was her biggest concern for to be mage and a noble, the magic wielding ruling class of the world; one had to at least be able to perform magic. Louise having yet to be able to prove that she is capable of magic would be undoubtedly expelled from the academy if she fails to summon a familiar here today. How would her parents react to a daughter who technically is not even a noble?

Maybe Mr. Colbert will forget to call on me; he's already gone through the rest of the class, Louise thought hopefully.

Jean Colbert, the balding and bespectacled academy professor pushed his glasses higher unto the bridge of his nose and spoke. "I believe with that we are finished here unless I've forgotten anyone."

Louise breathed a sigh of relief believing she had escaped her final judgment but then Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt-Zerbst the well-endowed redheaded Germanian transfer student spoke up. "Uh professor I think you're forgetting about the Zero, she's the last one."

Louise paled. If she had a license to kill just one person in the whole world she would use it to annihilate Kirche right now.

"Ah yes, Miss Valliere if you would please." Colbert spoke to Louise.

O.K I you can do this Louise, no pressure, Louise thought to herself. She stepped forward and drew her summoning circle on the ground which Colbert happily noted was perfect and a reflection of Louise's superb writing work. The other students instinctively started inching backwards to avoid the inevitable explosive catastrophe that is Louise's 'magic'. Montmorency Margarita La Fere de Montmorency another student who had long blonde hair fixed into ringlets spoke up as Louise was preparing her spell. "Why even let the Zero attempt the summoning spell? We all know what's going to happen; the explosion might even kill us this time."

Her playboy of a boyfriend Guiche de Gramont chimed in. "I'll be holding you responsible if any harm comes to my beautiful familiar Zero."

The other students suddenly worried for the safety of their own familiars shifted around nervously while murmuring among themselves. Before Louise could turn to shout at them Colbert quickly spoke up to berate his students. "Enough! I will ask that you all act respectfully and in a manner befitting your titles as nobles! I'll have no more of this 'Zero' nonsense from any of you, am I clear?"

The other students settled down and Louise was grateful to Mr. Colbert for that. With her preparations finished she turned to the circle, lifted her wand up high, and began to chant her spell.

Here goes nothing_._ "My servant who lives somewhere in the universe…"

* * *

**Sol system, Earth 2558**

**UNSC Infinity, Engine Deck**

Petty Officer Third Class Saito Hiraga walked along the narrow corridors of the UNSC Infinity towards where his work area in the ships main engine room. Saito, being 19 years old, completed his naval training at the rank of PO3 and was assigned to the Infinity as part of fresh batch of replacement crewmen. His duties were to work with the senior enlisted men and officers in learning to be an engine technician. Growing up in Tokyo, Japan he always had a fascination with the Navy's starships and technology so he aspired to join the Navy after high school. Getting assigned to the largest and most formidable ship in the UNSC fleet was an opportunity of a lifetime for him. He remembered how scared he was during the battle of Earth when he was 13 and how his uncle died in the battle of Cleveland. Then there was the New Phoenix incident a few months back in which the whole city was wiped out. Now he's here in the Navy to do his part to keep humanity safe from any threat.

Saito wearing his yellow working uniform approached the bulkhead that led to the engine one of the engine rooms. Two marines stood at each side of the metal doors and both took notice of his approach. One of the marines snapped to attention and saluted. "Sir, Lieutenant Robinson is waiting for all engine tech personnel on the main engine floor. He's right this way."

His marine companion and Saito both stared at him incredulously.

"Um, why are you saluting me and calling me sir?" Saito finally asked.

"Aren't you a petty officer? We're always supposed to salute an officer right?" he answered as if it was common sense to do so.

"He's a PO3 dumbass, that's pretty much the same rank as corporal!" The other marine chimed in.

"Well how was I supposed to know that!?"

"Dude how'd you even get through basic!? You're unbelievable and-"

Saito chose to ignore the two arguing leathernecks and proceeded through the bulkhead to his destination. The slipspace jump would be happening any moment now and Lt. Robinson wanted all techs on hand for a briefing. In fact the jump seems to have been delayed a few minutes from Captain Lasky's announcement of when they would be departing. I can't wait to some that chili in the mess hall later, got to get through the morning first though. Just remembered I still have to see about getting that damn data pad fixed at some point. How's a guy supposed to-? His thoughts were interrupted when a green oval of light abruptly manifested directly in his path.

"Whoa!"

Startled by the phenomenon Saito let out a surprised yelp and fell on his backside. Looking up at the sudden anomaly Saito saw the green oval floating in place where it appeared as it bathed the steel grey corridor in a green glow. Gathering his senses he quickly scrambled to his feet.

"Oh shit, is this some kind of alien attack?" Saito said while drawing his M6H sidearm, pointing it directly at the oval.

"We heard a shout, everything alright in here!?" One of the two marines from earlier shouted as they both ran into the corridor.

"What the hell is that!?" The other one shouted as they both saw to glowing anomaly.

Both marines brought their weapons to bear on the oval not being exactly sure what it was they were seeing.

"So I guess I'm not the only one seeing this thing?" Saito asked.

"Any idea what this is petty officer?"

Saito shook his head. "No Idea, it just appeared right in my face when I was walking down the corridor."

"I'll get on the horn with the el tee and let him know about this." One of the marines said.

He then got on his radio and started to report their finding to command. While that was happening Saito drew closer to the green oval against his better judgment.

"Whoa dude, I would get too close to that thing if I were you." The other marine warned.

Saito could swear he could hear a voice coming from strange thing, it kind of sounded like French but he wasn't sure. The marine with him must have heard the voice too. "Is that thing talking? Tell me I'm not the only one hearing this man? Hey what are you doing?!"

"It's strange, I feel like this thing is calling to me somehow." Saito says absentmindedly as he drifted ever closer.

"Oh hell no, I've seen way to many movies to know where this is heading." The marine then grabbed Saito and pulled him back quickly just as the oval seemed to have made an attempted to grab Saito.

Meanwhile with the other marine Lt. Robinson could be heard on the radio.

"**Damn it! The slipspace drive is firing up right now; you three keep your eyes on the anomaly I'll get in contact with Captain Lasky.**"

"Aye Aye sir, we'll keep watch here." With that the marine clocked off the radio.

Just then they all felt the slipspace drive fire, no doubt making the tear in space time right outside the ship. At the same time the green oval started to pulse and bubble sporadically while making a high pitched noise.

"Uh guys, what's it doing?" Saito nervously asked.

Before either of the two marines could answer the anomaly 'popped' like a balloon and a green shockwave of energy exploded outward. Saito and the marines were all tossed back through the corridor impacting painfully on the wall behind them.

* * *

**Sol system, Earth 2558**

**UNSC Infinity, S-Deck**

Commander Sarah Palmer was overseeing the Spartan fire teams and getting them ready for combat as per Captain Lasky's orders.

She knew Lasky was no fool; they had already talked about the matter of this diplomatic mission earlier. It was obvious to both Lasky and her that the Covenant Remnant probably wouldn't take too kindly to the Elites and Brutes trying to make peace. Lasky had made it very clear that her Spartans needed to be ready for anything since they would be groundside acting as the bodyguard for the human contingent of the talks.

Before her she watched as armor techs hurried around the deck assisting Spartans don their armor and ready their gear. Some were having their energy shields tested while others were have their targeting sensors calibrated by looking at flashing light panels on the wall. Then she noticed Spartan Paul DeMarco just finishing his armor checks and approached him.

"DeMarco, I trust fire team Majestic is ready for action."

DeMarco turned and gave her a sharp salute. "Commander Palmer, my Spartans are all ready to go ma'am. We all know the stakes on this one."

"Glad you understand. You and your team will be with us groundside as security for the talks. Don't forget Hood, Lasky, and all those alien diplomats will be counting on our performance if shit hits the fan."

"Understood commander you can-"

Demarco was cut off by a sudden and violent shaking followed by a wave of green energy that passed through the hull of the ship. The lights went dark for a few moments before the backup power kicked in; bathing the Spartans and technicians in a dim red light.

"What the hell was that?!" Spartan Carlo Hoya shouted.

"Don't know man." Spartan Gabriel Thorne responded.

Every Spartan on the deck went on alert as soon as the ship started to shake, they were prepared for anything. Then they felt more shaking and the ship lurch forward abruptly.

Palmer turned on her radio and contacted to bridge.

"This is Commander Palmer to the bridge, mind filling us in on what the hell is going on up there Tom?!"

"**Sarah now's not the best time!"**

She could hear some frantic shouting into the background and Lasky turning to bark some orders at some crewman before returning to his radio.

"**Get your Spartans secured and ready for anything, things are about to get bumpy!**"

Unnerved by the state of panic on the bridge and lack of answers to her original question Palmer complied. "Aye Aye Captain, Palmer out."

* * *

**Sol system, Earth 2558**

**UNSC Infinity, Bridge**

The bridge of the Infinity was in complete pandemonium. Naval officers, crewmen, and marines were frantically manning their stations and jumping between systems that needed their attention. Monitors and warning lights were flashing as pretty much any system that had a warning alarm was sounding. Captain Lasky knew Palmer would get things under control down at the S-Deck.

Looking at the feed of one of the forward external cameras Lasky noticed something unusual and unsettling about the slipspace portal they were about to enter.

"Roland what are looking at here?! I need answers now!"

Roland's holographic avatar appeared on the center of the map table and directed attention to a scale representation of the Infinity and the portal. "Captain we're looking at is an anomaly with slipspace that has never been observed before. Despite our emergency shutdown of the slipspace drive the portal still persist and appears to be pulling us towards it. This coincides with the reported unknown entity that was seen near the engine rooms sending out a wave of energy throughout the ship. Upon contact with the slipspace drive which was firing the portal took on the current abnormalities we see now. I was unable to identify exactly what the energy emission was but I'm working on it."

"Roland's right Captain! The portal's trying to pull us in and the little wind Infinity has left in her won't keep us out of it!" Helmsman James interjected.

He was struggling to keep the ship out of the anomalous slipspace portal having the reverse thrusters firing as much juice as the damaged systems would allow. The portal had turned greened and was crackling violently with energy lashing out of its swirling center.

"Captains DeSanta of the UNSC Song of the East and Richmond of the UNSC Euclid's Anvil report that their ships are also caught in the portals gravity well and are struggling to free themselves." Roland reported.

"Tell all the other ships in the battle group to put some distance between themselves and the portal!"

"Already ahead of you Captain, I have all other vessels within 10km range pulling out to a safe distance."

The ship suddenly lurched forward increasing in speed towards the portal opening.

"This is it Captain, reverse thrusters aren't strong enough to stop us! We're going people!" James shouted in panic.

"Damn it!" Lasky got on the intercom and made a ship wide announcement. "**Everyone hold on, things are about to get rough!**"

With that the bridge crew held on to whatever they could as the ship entered the portal. Unable to escape the increased pull of the vortex, Song of the East and Euclid's Anvil also slipped into the portal right behind Infinity. With that the abnormal green portal dissipated and left the rest of the battle group intact and wondering where humanities most important ship had gone.

* * *

**Unknown planet xxxx [?]**

**Unknown location **

Currently a thick blinding layer of smoke filled the clearing where the students of the academy of magic had been performing their familiar summoning. Unsurprisingly Louise Valliere had created a rather large explosion upon attempting the summoning spell herself. Louise herself was now standing exactly where she was before staring blankly into space with her hair and school uniform slightly singed from the blast.

From his position Professor Colbert watched his other students wheeze and cough to get the ash out of their lungs with some throwing annoyed looks Louise's way. At least they all looked relatively unharmed save for singed hair, dirtied uniforms, and agitated familiars. "Is everyone alright?!" he asked. A collection of annoyed groans and mumbles was the only answer he received. Turning back around he noticed Louise's expressionless face staring into the smoke. Following her gaze he could see amidst the smoke her summoning circle and the area around it burned by the blast, nothing else. "… Louise."

Quickly turning around Louise responded to Professor Colbert with a desperate tone in her voice. "Please Professor, one more try. Just let me try one more time, I know I can do it."

"Louise."

"This was just a fluke; it should have worked this time. I just choked."

"Louise." Colbert repeated.

"This time for sure I'll just-" Louise made to go create another summoning circle but was stopped.

"Louise, you have attempted summoning a familiar several times before and have failed. Osmond's mandate was clear, today was your last chance." Colbert hated having to do this to her but rules were rules. "Today is the end of the line Louise, you know what happens next." He turned away unable to look at her face which showed how crushed she was. "I'm sorry Louise."

Louise's head hung low, she didn't want to believe Colbert's words but she knew they were true. Today was her last chance to use magic properly and prove she was a proper mage. Now she would be expelled from the academy for having no talent with magic and never be considered a mage. She would have to face her family, especially her mother, and she would be an embarrassment to the Valliere name. She would be useless to them and would be disowned to live as a commoner with no family name. Louise willed herself not to cry even as her eyes were already becoming moist, her classmates snickering behind her didn't help. This was it, her time a noble was over.

* * *

**In slipspace, 2558**

**UNSC Infinity, Engine Deck**

"That hurt a lot…" Saito picked himself off the floor with the help of a few more crewmen who arrived on the scene. "You guys alright?" He looked towards the two marines one of whom was rubbing his shoulder.

"Yeah we're fine, just banged my shoulder up a bit. Shit that was painful."

"Smacked my head straight into the wall, thank god for helmets." The other marine said.

One of the crewmen then spoke up. "Well if you guys are alright then we gotta get somewhere secure, shits hitting the fan right now."

"Yeah, captain wants everyone hunkered down and at their battle stations a.s.a.p." With that they all hustled away to their stations, Saito following closely behind.

His head becoming clear Saito took notice of the alarms and flashing lights blaring everywhere as well as the ship shaking periodically. The corridors were abuzz with activity as sailors and marines ran frantically to their stations while trying to figure out what was going on. "We were knocked out for only a couple minutes, what the hell happened?!" Saito queried over the chaos of shouting and alarms.

Another crewman spoke up. "Not really sure, but just as we were entering slipspace there was this green flash and then the portal got really violent and pulled us in!"

"Probably had to do with that weird glowing thing we saw earlier." Saito observed.

"Oh man this is bad, real bad." The marine that was with Saito said. "I bet we're being pulled back in time man, to a land before time and shit. Next thing is we're gonna be running from hungry giant reptiles in the ship!"

"Oh will you just shut your trap for once." His friend spoke to him. "Jeez, you could at least take our current situation seriously."

Palming his face Saito shook his head at the strange duo. Now wasn't the time for this he needed to get to engine control and maintenance to do his job. Spotting Lt. Robinson Saito approached him and saluted. "Sir, what's the situation here?"

The lieutenant, a raven haired man who looked to be in his early thirties, thought for a moment before replying, "I honestly have no idea Hiraga, the ship's reactor and power plants started going haywire for seemingly no reason. I need you to get to your station and do what you can to help the other get things up and running again, don't panic and just follow your team leader's orders they'll know what to do."

"Aye Aye sir!" Saito replied.

Robinson turned to the others present and addressed them. "I believe the rest of you have battle station to be getting to."

With that the other marines and crewmen each hurried off to their respective stations and duties while Saito made his way towards his own station. Looking over the monitor in his work area he saw exactly how much of a mess the systems were in. Reactors only at 30% power, main engines offline and the systems are not responding to any attempts to restore them. How we are supposed to fix this in the middle of slipspace is beyond me, Saito thought to himself. He also noticed that two cruisers were also currently in slipspace transit with the Infinity, both reporting systems malfunctions but not as bad as they were experiencing. Looking at the mess of malfunctions and warnings on the monitors around him he began to feel overwhelmed. What am I supposed to do here man, damn He considered consulting his more experienced senior crewmen but they all looked just as panicked and confused as him. He scratched the back of his head and returned to his console. "What did we get ourselves into?"

Just then the intercom system came to life again with another message.

"**All hands we're coming out of slipspace, be on alert!**"

Huh, that was a pretty fast slipspace jump even for a ship like the Infinity.

* * *

**Above unknown planet 2558**

**UNSC Infinity, Bridge**

For Captain Lasky things just went from worse to terrible. Whatever strange slipspace anomaly had taken his ship and two of his escorts had decided to spit them out in some random point in space. He was glad at least that it refrained from dumping them in the center of a star but right now the ship was hurtling towards a planet and with little to no engine power to slow down. "Roland I need to where we are!" Lasky shouted.

Roland's orange projection appeared on the command interface. "I already had my sub processes working on it as soon as we exited slipspace captain. I cannot at this time ascertain where in the galaxy we could possibly be, current star patterns match any known exploratory data. Also as you may have noticed we're on a collision course with an unknown planet that is roughly the same size and mass as Earth. Preliminary atmospheric and surface scans also reveal Earthlike atmosphere and ocean coverage as well. Also note that there are two moons in orbit around the planet, one red the other blue."

Lasky looked over the projection of the blue planet for a moment before coming to a decision. "Roland, prepare a flight plan to that will allow us to use whatever reverse thrust power we have available for a slowed decent and landing. We can still make a soft landing to prevent further damage to the ship." He counted himself lucky to at least find a planet like this to land on and make repairs being glad it was not some rocky planet with no atmosphere.

"I'm already on it captain, another one of my processes has already worked out a flight plan." During the ship wide system malfunctions Roland has split himself into thousands of different "sub routines" to assist with as many issues as he could. Even then Roland was nowhere near being pushed to the limits of his processing power, testament to why most UNSC ships have an A.I assigned to them. "Captain, the Euclid's Anvil and Song of the East report they have full engine power and will have no trouble slowing down. They'll escort us down to the surface."

"Alright then, put all remaining engine power to reverse thrusters! Helmsmen, put us on course for a soft entry into the atmosphere." Looking again at the projection of the planet and their current flight path Lasky realized that losing extra weight would help slow them down. "It'll help soften our decent if we lose some extra weight. Roland, tell the sub vessel crews to launch immediately."

"I'm on it." Roland replied.

As the Infinity began to enter the upper atmosphere her ten internally stored Strident class frigates deployed from her underbelly and fanned out. The loss of weight allowed Infinity to level out as she plowed through the upper cloud layer with her escorts in tow. So far it seemed that the landing will be gentler and more controlled than the crashing landing on Requiem.

"We've got a good LZ in a large valley roughly 5000 m up spin, I'll try to put her down gently but it's still going to be a bit rough!" Helmsmen James looked over the LZ one more time and reported something else. "LZ's mostly clear except for-"

"I see it James." Lasky replied. "Roland."

"I detected indigenous life forms on the planet surface during my initial scans sir nothing major, but then my scans picked up small settlements and cities. Intelligent life…" What had Roland and the bridge crew worried was the fact that a large pentagon shaped structure was also in the same general vicinity as their LZ and it was currently occupied by the locals.

"We can't avoid it now." Lasky finished. "Nothing we can do about it now the locals are definitely going to spot us, let's just focus on landing safe and sound first."

"Final approach ladies and gents, moving through cloud layer now!" James announced as he put all remaining engines power left into softening the landing.

Lasky got on the ship's intercom. "**All hands brace for a hard landing!**"

* * *

**Unknown planet 2558**

**Large grassy valley**

The magic academy students began leaving the grassy field and began to head back to the academy building with their new familiars in tow, all except for one.

"Tough luck Zero."

"There's always next time, oh wait there won't be one for you. Hah!"

"I guess we should call her commoner now, hey Zero I hear the school could use a few more maids."

Louise felt like she was on the verge of tears as she listened to her classmate's taunts. She was the only one left standing on the hill where the summoning ceremony took place; her head was hung down between her shoulders not knowing what to do now. It wasn't fair. Why did she have to be the talentless zero? Her peers were right; she would only be useful as some commoner maid servant at this point.

Colbert watched Louise in her distraught state and felt terrible for her, he knew she would likely lose her status and shame her family and wished there was something more her could do about it. He was about to reach out to her when low rumbling noise started to come from the sky. "What in the world?" he pondered aloud.

The other students heard it too as they all stopped and looked upward trying to find the source.

Then Montmorency spotted something in the clouds and shouted "Look! What in Brimir's name is that?!"

Louise who was too busy sulking to care about whatever it was that was make the noise perked her head up at Montmorency's finding. Coming through the clouds was… something she had never seen before or any of them for that matter. She beheld a giant oddly shaped object descending on them through the clouds and whatever it was it was massive. "W-w-what?" she muttered weakly as even more objects slowly made their decent on the larger one's flanks, though they were much smaller each one was still larger than anything she had ever seen.

"Are those meteors falling from the stars or something?" Kirche nervously asked her companion Tabitha.

Tabitha who was now giving the descending objects her full attention replied simply. "No."

"Then what-"

Then suddenly as the behemoth of a thing flew over their heads the air felt like it was vibrating and the ground beneath them began to shake slightly. The object then impacted into the ground a several kilometers north west of the academy and kicked up a considerable dust cloud and causing a massive tremor to be felt far and wide. More troubling however was that the other objects slowed down and came to a hover above the largest one.

Colbert saw this and immediately knew that these were not mere space rocks but… could they be ships or worse, flying beast of some kind? Not sure about his theory but not wanting to take any chances he ordered the students back to the academy immediately. "Everyone back to the academy right this instant, that's an order!"

Louise could only stand rooted in her spot on the hilltop completely shocked at the site of the colossal monsters that had just appeared to do Brimir knows what. First she fails to summon a familiar and prove herself a mage and now this.

"Louise we must hurry back now!" Colbert shouted in her direction when he noticed she wasn't fleeing back to the academy with the rest of the students.

"R-right." Snapping out of her shock Louise stumbled her way forward following the rest of the class back to the academy walls with the strange behemoths looming in the background. It was going to be a very busy few days.


	2. Contact Halkeginia pt 1

**[A/N] Hello readers, first let me thank you for all the favs and follows this story received, even within a few hours after it was uploaded. I honestly was not expecting this many views, follows, and comments to be honest. I've read all of your comments and advice on how things should go, much appreciated. Let me apologize for the repeated updates to the first chapter, don't know if that email alerts you, I noticed some glaring mistakes that made my face melt off and I needed to change them. I made sure to go through this chapter with a fine toothed comb but I sure there's a mistake I missed here or there, so again sorry.**

**I was originally planning to have the first chapter be as long as it is now and the rest of the story be shorter chapters, however I ended up being able to write more than I thought I could. In fact this chapter, Contact Halkeginia, was just going to be one part but if I put everything in as planned it would be twice as long as it is now. Nothing too exciting this chapter though I have a plan for the UNSC to fight their first small battle next chapter.**

**Remember this is my first time trying the whole creative writing hobby so if there is something about my writing style that any of you other fanfic writers think could be better be sure to let me know so I can improve. Keep posting any ideas you have and I may incorporate them if they fit with the plot I've schemed up.**

**Thanks again.**

**[EDIT NOTE]**

**Changed 50 mm to 70 mm, thankyou those who pointed that out. I knew Infinity's guns were that size but slipped up and put the caliber for standard PDGs.**

**Chapter 2: Contact Halkeginia part one**

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**Native life form structure, west tower**

As the sun began to set night slowly began to fall on the inhabitants of the Tristain Magic Academy. Everyone from student, servant, to administrative staff are feeling on edge, reason being the unidentified beings floating around the sky not too far off from the campus. Since their arrival the largest of these entities was still firmly grounded since its crash landing. Headmaster Osmond has since declared that no one should approach the unknowns or leave the premises until a proper threat assessment can be ascertained. Louise as well as several other students has spent most of the afternoon in the academy's towers gawking at the flying monstrosities looming in the sky, seemingly tending to and protecting the largest of them. As the daylight dimmed the lights and fires on the backs of the flying objects glowed more noticeably, like beast breathing fire. For now they seemed passive and uncaring of their presence.

Among the students occupying the west tower with Louise were Kirche and Tabitha, both of whom were trying to get a better view of the anomalies just like everyone else. Louise's worries about her failing during the summoning ritual were temporarily placed on the backburner in place of apprehension of what would be in store for everyone in the school. Sighing, she was glad for the distraction if nothing else and quite the distraction those things were indeed. Most of the students were currently too afraid or too excited about the new arrivals to pester her much about being the 'Zero'. I hope they stay docile as they are right now tonight, she thought.

"What do you think those things are? Nobody really knows for sure yet." Kirche was just as fascinated as everyone else concerning the new arrivals.

Forgetting her bitter hatred for her Germanian rival for now Louise replied, "I wish I knew. They look… incredible."

"A lot of the other students think they're some kind of sky beast or demons, can't blame them, though…" Kirche motioned towards Tabitha, "Tabitha here thinks otherwise."

Tabitha who had her face buried in a book seemed to not be paying any mind to the current situation but anyone paying closer attention could see she was spending most of her time studying the visitors rather than actually reading. She glanced up and acknowledged Kirche's implicit request to share here theory on the subject matter. "Ships." She said simply.

Louise spun to look at Tabitha with an unbelieving expression on her face and in her tone. "Ships!? Like airships!? No way, how could airships be as large as those monsters?' She recomposed herself quickly as Kirche spoke again.

"That's what I told her at first but she tells me that she can see cannons on those things as well as what looked like armor plating when she used a far sight spell. Not only that but rumor has it that Professor Colbert is trying to convince the headmaster and the professors of the same theory." She turned her head from Louise and continued gazing at the things in the distances which were now silhouetted by the setting sun.

"Maybe they're like armored beasts or something," Louise looked out the window scratching the side of her head in thought, "they don't have any sails or wings by the looks of it and they're emanating all that light as well as those blue flames."

"Perhaps powerful magic." Tabitha interjected. Must report this back to Gallia later she thought to herself.

Just then Kirche's familiar Flame walked up and nuzzled her leg looking for attention. Kirche started rubbing the fire salamander's head cooing softly into his ear. "It's alright Flame I know you're all excited like your master. We'll get to find out what those things are real soon." She turned to Louise with a smug look on her face. "Oh Louise, I don't believe you've had the pleasure of meeting my familiar his name's Flame."

Louise knew where this was inevitably heading. "Flame, really Zerbst that's all you could think of? Shouldn't expect more from a Germanian I suppose." Louise was hoping that the subject of familiars wouldn't be brought up anymore at for the rest of the day. She really didn't want to argue with Kirche about this right now. It was true however that most of the familiars at the academy were acting restless and just as curious as their masters over the mystery visitors to Tristain. Damnation, I shouldn't have taken her bait by making that little quip she thought.

Kirche continued. "We're supposed to have the day off tomorrow to get to know our new familiars but by the looks of things everyone will be getting a break. I guess you lucked out Zero, no familiar but still get the day off."

Louise closed her eyes breathed in slowly, determined not to let Kirche's use of 'Zero' get to her. "I'm not having this conversation with you Zerbst. I'm unsettled enough as it is already, I don't need you trying to incite me right."

"Incite you? I'm simply stating facts Zero." Kirche lazily waved her hand around. "You should be thinking about what you're going to do tomorrow when Osmond expels you. There's always room for more servants here you know, commoner who was once a noble should not have any trouble finding any employ. Though you should start learning now how to speak to those above your station, it will get you in many troubles if you don't"

Already having enough of Kirche's attempts to verbally bully her and not wanting to start a scene amongst all the other students currently huddled by the windows in the tower Louise simply walked off to the stairway. "It's getting late and I'll be going to the dining hall before we miss supper." With that Louise began to descend the tower with a huff.

"Perhaps I'm being a little too mean hmm?"

"Just become lesser noble," Tabitha spoke from behind her, "not commoner."

"I suppose you're right but why not have a little fun while she doesn't know that yet." Turning back to look out the window Kirche and Tabitha stood watching for a moment longer before Kirche decided she was quite hungry as well. "She has a point, let's get to the dining hall Tabby; I don't want to miss dinner." She then turned to head down the stairs leaving Tabitha behind.

Tabitha lingered, still gazing at what she suspected to be ships of some kind. Maybe I can try to take a closer look with Illococoo later she thought. She had to admit that she was feeling unusually curious about the day's events, curious enough to even think of doing something as potentially dangerous as this. Though she was no stranger to life threatening situations she rarely sought out such situations herself, it was mostly the work of her uncle trying to kill her via impossible missions and assignments.

"Tabitha! Are you coming or not!?" Kirche called out from behind her.

"Coming." was Tabitha's reply before she turned and quickly followed her friend out of the tower and to the dining hall.

* * *

Meanwhile Louise was making her way across the main courtyard area from the Void tower into the academy dining hall. She was currently in a sour mood from Kirche's bullying and successful attempts to aggravate her. I should have known not being pestered about my failure was too much to hope for. There were several other students in the open courtyard making their way to the dining hall for dinner and Louise could see some of them whispering and discreetly pointing towards her. She had a reputation as a magical failure among the student body and some of the first years noticed she was the only second year without a familiar accompanying her; confirming the rumors that she failed her summoning and was to be expelled. They quickly lost interest in her though as the objects in the sky had everyone's rapt attention, Louise could only imagine a similar situation was happening in the nearby villages and towns.

"Figures that even in the midst of a situation like this that harlot Zerbst still has to pick on me, like it's her job or something."

As she walked past a group of first years loitering outside the dining hall doors she overheard a bit of their conversation. "Pretty cool that we got the half the day of classes off huh?"

"Didn't you hear? The headmaster had all the teachers gather for a meeting about those things that appeared." A first year girl responded to the boy's question.

It was true, Professor Colbert did say that class for the rest of the day was cancelled and he needed to attend an emergency faculty meeting the topic of which was not very difficult to guess. They've been in that meeting for a while now; I wonder what they're planning to do. Louise's thoughts were cut short when she suddenly bumped into to something, or someone more like when she quickly saw she had run into one of the maid staff. The maid had been carrying a platter of refreshments when flew from her hands.

"Eek, oh no!" The maid let out a startled yelp.

Reacting quickly both Louise and the maid managed to grab hold of the plate before its contents hit the ground. Regaining her bearings the maid quickly thanked Louise. "Oh ah thank you milady, please forgive my clumsiness." She then bowed down with the platter in her hands.

Louise adjusted her shirt and made sure nothing spilled on her, she looked up at the maid who was of average height for a girl her age and unusual raven black hair. "No, no, it was me who was not paying attention to where I was going. You may carry on maid."

"Thank you." The maid repeated nervously and with that Louise left to go find her usual seat at the second year's table. As for the maid she still had a delivery to make. The lack of a proper apology for bumping her would have been appreciated but nobles rarely apologized to peasants like her for their wrong doings, her admission of fault was as close to one as she would get. She was glad however that the noble girl did not choose to make a scene and berate her for bumping her. Hmm pink hair that must've been lady Valliere she thought. Even among the commoner work staff she had a reputation for the messes her failed attempts at magic would cause and the fact that the maids had to clean them up. At least she avoided making a mess this time. That was close she thought.

Entering the main building the maid reached her destination, the headmaster's office. As she approached the door she noticed she could not hear the discussion going on inside, no doubt a silence spell to keep out eavesdroppers. After knocking on the door she waited for an answer and she was greeted by Professor Colbert.

"Ah Siesta you've come with the refreshments, thank you." He took the tray from her and continued. "We've been at it for a while now and still have much more to discuss, this should hold our appetites down. You may return to the servant's quarters, I know it's been quite a busy day for you too."

Siesta bowed. "Thank you monsieur Colbert, I will." She then turned heel and left.

* * *

Kirche was on the lookout for any of the academy guards who were ordered to keep students inside the walls. After having dinner the two left the dining hall when Tabitha had made her interest to see the possibly ships up closer. Currently the two were outside the walls as Tabitha prepared to mount her dragon familiar Slyphid.

"Tabitha are you ready?"

"Not sure." was her simple response.

"Look I know it's a little scary but you're just going to get a little close and fly right back, just like we talked about." She turned to look at the things in floating in the sky. "If they do anything funny just come right back."

Tabitha was obviously having second thoughts about the plan, she was curious but not sure if she was curious enough to go through with this. "Worth risk?" she wondered aloud to herself.

"Look Tabby you and I both know the professors are just going to sit and watch them from here, we'll be doing everyone a favor by getting a closer examination of what we're dealing with here instead of just watching from afar with far sight."

Tabitha let out a quick sigh; this would end up being troublesome later she just knew it. "Alright, I'm going." Accepting that curiosity will probably kill the cat she mounted up on Slyphid and took off.

Slyphid let out an excited squeal, "Kyuuu!" and they were off.

"Be careful Tabby! Tell me all about them when you get back!"

* * *

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**Native life form structure, Central tower**

Professor Colbert closed the door after sending the maid off and set the platter of small hand food and treats down for the others to partake in. It wasn't a proper meal but it should do for now. Osmond and the other teaching staff had been speculating about the origins and intent of the mystery visitors for a few hours now and they needed to come up with a course of action. Osmond had already sent a messenger pigeon to the capital inform the crown of the situation and a royal investigation should be on its way here in a day or two.

"So we are all in agreement that they are indeed air ships of some sort?" Osmond addressed the staff as they ate their light meal. When he spoke again, continuing the discussion, everyone gave the old wizard their full attention.

Every professor nodded in agreement. "Yes, there's no longer any doubt about it." Colbert replied.

After observing the crafts more closely with far sight spells the presence of cannons and armor gave credence to the idea of them being airships. Not only that but several professors claimed to have seen dragons flying between the vessels every once in a while muck like the royal navy's griffon and dragon carriers.

"Well now that we know those things are airships we need to figure out who made them and could possibly be operating such things. Right now we can only guess what their intentions could be, though for now they seem to be keeping to themselves." Professor Chevreus, one of the academy's earth magic specialists, spoke to the group.

"Hmm, I believe you told me earlier that if they were indeed airships then we could have Elves on our hands Colbert." Osmond spoke thoughtfully while stroking his long white beard.

"Elves!?" Professor Reinhardt, a fire magic instructor, exclaimed. "How can you say something like that so casually!?"

From his chair Osmond looked to the professor and answered him. "We do not know much about them but it wouldn't surprise me if Elven ingenuity could create such warships."

"If they are Elves then we will most likely need to evacuate immediately given the rumors and stories about them. Also the Queen will most certainly have to get Romalia involved in this, we would need their aide." As he spoke his thoughts on a possible Elven attack Colbert glanced out the window towards the ships with a concerned look on his face.

Osmond responded. "We still do not know for sure who or what they are but for now let's not cause any undue alarm. But now let us get onto your last theory Professor Colbert, the one involving the young Miss Valliere during the familiar summoning."

Everyone turned to listen to Colbert before he elaborated further. "Yes, well essentially given the time frame between Louise's attempt at the summoning spell and our guest's arrival I believe she may have had something to do with them being here."

From her desk in Osmond's office, which was also being shared by several others for the moment, the secretary Miss Longueville gave a skeptical reply. "But didn't she fail multiple times at previous attempts of summoning beforehand? I've also never heard of a summoning appearing anywhere but from the circle they were called forth from."

"We've known she's always had the magic potential, her creating of explosions from nothing were testament to that, I'm not saying those ships and their inhabitants are hers for sure but it's still a possibility."

Osmond thought about this information for a moment. "If you're right then we will have to proceed very carefully on how to contact Tristain's new guest and explain Miss Valliere's familiar situation. If they are Elves however then finishing the contract would most likely be impossible as an elf would never be subservient to a human. Either way I will summon Valliere here tomorrow morning to discuss the matter. Everyone here is dismissed; I know it's been a long day for all of you. Professor Colbert there is still some more I'd like to discuss with you if you don't mind."

"Not at all headmaster Osmond." Colbert replied

The other staff members filed out of the office to go about the rest of their business leaving Osmond, Colbert, and Longueville behind.

* * *

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**UNSC Infinity, bridge**

Following the crash landing on an unknown world captain Lasky and the Infinity crew have managed to get things relatively in order, though there were still many systems down. Inside the bridge Lasky and his command crew were joined by Captains DeSanta and Richmond of the autumn class cruisers Song of the East and Euclid's Anvil respectively. Also among them were Infinity science chief Dr. Glassman, Commander Palmer, and ONI officer Lieutenant Bauman. Finding themselves grounded on a foreign world with local forms of intelligent life no doubt finding their presence intriguing to say the least they were in the middle of a meeting to formulate their next plan of action.

The high ranking officers surrounded the command table as the orange avatar of Roland gave an account of the damages via a 3d hologram of the Infinity. "While we have managed to restore reactor power and systems for most areas the engine systems, artificial gravity generators, and slipspace drive are still fried due to the unknown energy wave that swept through the ship. We're going to be beached for good while until we can figure out how to fix the damages, it'll take longer to repair than when the ship first crash landed of Requiem and that was a hard landing. On the plus side we won't be completely defenseless, our suite of 50 mm point defense auto cannons are up and running as well as our wide array of missile pods. Also, for as long as we remain planet side the lack of artificial gravity is insignificant."

"Whatever that energy pulse was, it was strong enough to fry the Forerunner tech in our engines. We've been trying all day but none of my engineers can figure out why the systems won't respond to us." Dr. Glassman, Infinity science's chief engineer, spoke after Roland's report.

"Well tell the other docs to take their time with the repairs; we don't want to take any chances. Remember Infinity's engineering crew are at your full disposal to fix this problem."

Captain Richmond spoke up with an accent associated with the southern areas of the Earth country, the United States. "Now about our need for defenses and the locals, what have you gathered from our observations?" Robinson was a rather large individual with gray hair that was short and slicked back and large gray mustache under his nose that slightly curled out at the ends.

"Roland, can you pull up our surveillance data?" Glassman asked the A.I, after he did so he continued. "As you can see gentlemen we've been monitoring the actions of the natives since we landed and surprise, they've been giving us their rapt attention as well. Images of the local inhabitants of the nearby villages and fortress structure appeared before them, the natives all staring in their direction. However the most notable thing about them is-"

"They're human." Lasky finished for him. The whole crew was aware of the situation by now; they were on an unknown world inhabited by humans. "How is that possible though? Where could they have originated from?"

Roland spoke. "I am still unable to ascertain where we are in the galaxy at this time though existing galactic band patterns suggest we may be somewhere extra galactic at present, still need to confirm. Either way this planet does not match any colonial records nor have insurrectionists factions been known to branch out to other worlds themselves."

Pushing his glasses up his nose Glassman elaborated further. "It is most likely that these people are entirely indigenous to this world, a species that developed coincidentally looking like humans. Also reconnaissance of the immediate area report local flora and fauna coincidentally look like those found on Earth. The concerning behavior and capabilities they've been demonstrating lends credence to that theory. Roland if you would."

Video of the occupants of the fortress as well as some people in the nearby villages using strange powers appeared on a large holo screen for all to see. The people in the video were somehow doing things like producing fire and water from seemingly nowhere in what appeared to be directed attacks, likely practice, as well as manipulating the dirt and rock around them and even flying. The individuals performing these feats looked mostly teenaged and led those present to conclude that the structure may actually be a school of some sort, possible a military academy given its placement in a fortress.

Lieutenant Bauman the ONI officer present spoke. "What sort of technology could they possibly possess to allow them to pull off such things?" The operative was a bald, light skinned and rather slim character in his late thirties but still gave off an aura of hidden deadliness and agendas that most ONI spooks do.

Glassman continued. "We're not entirely sure this is being done through the use of any form of technology Lieutenant, as you all can see the technological status of their civilization is rather… primitive. I'd say late 15th to 16th century, early 17th at best. The powers they possess would require further research to understand."

Captain DeSanta, a man roughly the same build as Lasky but slightly older and with raven hair neatly combed back, looked to Sarah Palmer. "Should push come to shove, would your Spartans be able to handle this Commander Palmer?"

Palmer studied to video for a moment longer before replying. "From what I've seen so far I think we can manage, but remember these are just kids. We still haven't seen what mamma and papa bear can do yet… sir."

Lasky placed his hand under his chin in thought. "Hopefully it won't come to that, for now they seem too afraid to try and approach us so we will maintain first contact protocol for now. They'll get curious enough eventually though there's no denying that; continue monitoring their military and odd abilities so we can know for sure what we're dealing with." Letting out a sigh Lasky finished. "If they were just some 16th century primitives I wouldn't worry but as Palmer stated we don't know the full extent of these 'super powers' they possess and things could get complicated."

"Things just got complicated!" Roland suddenly made an alarmed report gaining everyone's attention.

"What are you-" Palmer was cut off by radar alarms going off.

"Crewmen, report!" Lasky barked out.

A crewman manning a radar and sensors monitor reported. "Incoming air contact Captain!"

"Roland, give us a visual."

"Aye Aye Captain, pulling up a live feed of the bogey now." Roland pulled up a holo screen showing feed of one of the natives riding a blue flying reptilian creature towards the current battle group. The rider in question was a small blue haired girl who looked to be approaching rather cautiously but with a stern looking expression on her face. Furthermore they could clearly see she was one of the students at the possible military academy or base not making things any less tense.

"What the hell is that, a dragon?" Palmer asked no one in particular.

"Looks like it ma'am." answered another crewman.

Lasky then made a decision. "We don't know their intentions or what this individual plans to do, flash some spotlights at her to try to ward her and that… dragon off."

"Aye Aye sir!" A weapons operator punched some commands into his console and manually took control of one of the ship's powerful search lights. Aiming directly at the girl and her mount a bright beam of light illuminated the both of them. The dragon seemed to squeal and squint its eyes as the girl covered hers; she had her mount stopped and came to a hover. Lifting a staff, what looked like a shepherd's crook, she waved it around briefly before a small wall of ice appeared shielding her from the bright beam. They stayed behind the ice shield seemingly shaken up and confused.

"Interesting trick." Captain Richmond commented crossing his arms over his chest.

"Well I'm not having any of that." Lasky stated. "Make it clear that we want her out of our airspace and proximity, two rounds, 70 mm, now. Roland take to gun, make absolutely sure not to harm them in anyway as well as calculating where those rounds will land. We don't want to blow up some farmers livestock now."

"I have a solution, firing."

One of the point defense turrets fired off two rounds a safe distance from the duo but close enough for the girl to hear them. The girl looked shocked momentarily before getting the message and diving towards the deck speeding away back to the fort at low altitude.

"Alright gentlemen we discussed this contingency but now it's time to execute it. Return to your ships and let's make a perimeter, we need to establish that this area is ours for the time being. Circle the bandwagons."

* * *

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**UNSC Infinity, tertiary mess hall**

Saito was sitting at a table in one of the smaller mess halls which was currently packed with marines and sailors. He was fiddling with his data pad while eating a bowl of chili, one of the more decent s meals one could get on the ship. Gotta see the requisitions officer about getting this damn thing fixed or getting a new one he thought to himself.

"Hey swabbie how bout' you?"

Saito looked up to who just addressed him; it was one of the marines who were with him when the strange shit went down. They had spotted him at one of the tables and decided to go sit with him. "I didn't catch what you were talking about."

"Don't you think you ought to salute the prestigious officer first before addressing him? …Jackass" His buddy made a crack at his previous idiotic misunderstanding causing Saito to chuckle.

"Shut the fuck up! It was an honest mistake anybody could have made."

"Yeah whatever, anyway don't think we even caught your name sailor."

"Name's Hiraga, Saito Hiraga. What about you."

"I'm Stark, Logan Stark." He pointed next to himself. "This one's name is-"

"Locklear, Francis Locklear. We were talking about why we would possibly want to join the corps and go through this shit."

"Oh, err I dunno I guess I joined the navy because I wanted to help make a difference. When Earth was attacked I was just a kid you know, lost some family and friends."

Stark shared his story. "Me? I joined after losing my older brother during the war; he was an ODST hardcore stuff and all that. Have another older brother who joined the Marine Corps right after Kevin died, he went and became an ODST too and now he's out there doing lord knows what."

"I had an older bro in the ODSTs too. He died defending Reach; I was just a wee little lad at the time." Locklear used his hands to make a point about how little he was at the time.

"So you both had ODST brothers? That's pretty cool." Saito said, impressed with them.

"So have you seen the footage of the natives here? They're human! Can you believe that shit?"

"Yeah, pretty hard to fathom that some real old school humans would be living in a place like this." Saito answered back.

Thwump! Thwump!

Every marine and sailor in the mess hall stopped what they were doing at the muffled sound of the ships defense turrets firing.

"What the hell!?" Locklear exclaimed.

"**All hands man your battle stations standby for further, over.**"

Everyone moved reflexively and cleared out of the mess hall heading to their designated stations.

"Looks like things just got interesting!" Locklear proclaimed.

* * *

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**Native life form fort, main gate**

Upon making it back to the academy Tabitha and Slyphid quickly entered the main gate and into the safety of the walls. While she did not show it outwardly she was rather shaken up by what she had just experienced. She had let curiosity get the better of her and made a decision that even she knew was unlike her, to try and fly close to the ships to get a better view of them. She hadn't expected them to use some kind of magic to blind her with a bright light; it didn't hurt her physically so she assumed it was an attempt to ward her off. She was planning on getting out of there the moment they hit her with that magic but she couldn't get her bearings while blinded. Then they fired off their cannons at her and deciding not to take any chances she dove for the ground and sped out of there hoping to use the trees as cover. She was lucky they missed with those cannon rounds as they sounded pretty vicious when they whizzed by. Inside the academy a very furious Osmond and Colbert awaited her.

Colbert immediately berated her. "Miss Tabitha we saw that stunt you pulled and I don't think I need to tell you how upset we are with you right now. What in Brimir's name were you thinking? That cannon could have killed you! "

"Wanted closer look."

Osmond had his eyes focused on the ships. "Well now you've really stirred up the hive young lady."

Tabitha and Colbert both looked to see what he was talking about and what they saw made Colbert pale and Tabitha simply stare expressionless. The unknown ships, which had for the most part stayed dormant and keeping to themselves, were now rapidly moving and repositioning themselves. To make matters worse dragons seemed to be swarming out of them like agitated bees leaving their hive.

"…My bad."

* * *

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**UNSC Infinity crash site area**

When the Infinity first landed a contingent of marines was deployed to simply secure the immediate area around the ship to try and minimize native contact. Now however Lasky has ordered the perimeter be expanded out further and Infinity's escorts circled around the crash site more defensively. Flights of pelicans flew forth to land marines at the newly designated defense positions as well as hauling warthogs and quick setup barriers.

"Go! Go! Go!" A pelican crew chief rushed a squad of marines out of his bird as they moved to secure and fortify a cobbled road. Next to them a warthog with a mounted light antiaircraft turret (LAAG) deployed from another pelican along with a few more marines. As the marines quickly moved to set up a roadblock, razor wire, and motions sensors a pair of UH-146 falcons dropped of a Spartan fire team. As the new flacon variants flew off to other objectives the leader of fire team majestic barked out orders.

"Move! Move! Secure the perimeter! Madsen, Grant, you two go assist those marines set up the barricades! Hoya, Thorne, you guys scout these woods make sure there are no surprises lurking about! Discourage the curious if you have to!"

The Spartans all answered at once. "Yes sir!"

* * *

A squad of marines advanced through a forest to clear their designated area while also placing motion sensors on the ground. They heard a growling sound coming from some nearby undergrowth before a pair of vicious looking wolves charged at them. The squad leader fired off two rounds of his MA5D rifle at each of the beast dispatching them with ease.

"**Sargent report! What the hell was that!?**" his radio blared with his CO wanting a report on the gunfire.

"Just some wolves sir! Moving on to next waypoint over!"

0000

A warthog advance slowly along a dirt road with marines flanking it securing their assigned area. They then encountered some of the human locals running along the path in a big hurry, when they say the soldiers they froze like deer in headlights.

"Move it, get out of here now!" a marine barked while leveling his rifle at them.

Not understanding what the strange person said or what he was pointing at them the natives wasted no time in running away screaming like many others were doing.

* * *

Meanwhile with the grounded Infinity vehicle bays started to open up revealing scorpion main battle tanks along with more mechanized infantry which rolled out to reinforce the checkpoints. Above pelicans, falcons, hornets, and a few scattered broadswords swept out and secured the skies. Natives in the nearby villages and towns understandably being to panic when they saw the aircraft swarming in the sky and flying so close to them. As for the frigates, all ten flew into a circle pattern around Infinity to achieve complete 360 degree coverage with the guns, literally circling the bandwagons. The heavy cruisers stayed high above the beached ship ready to react to any threat if need be.

* * *

Sarah Palmer led a squad of marines and Spartans to secure her designated sector north of the crash site. The troops entered a clearing and noticed felled trees, logs, tents, and a still burning camp fire. "Looks like a logging camp commander, they left in a hurry this all looks recent." A marine gave her an assessment of the situation.

"Better for us then, we didn't have to 'persuade' them to leave the area." She turned on her helmet radio and to contact Lasky. "Commander Palmer to Captain Lasky my sector is secured and the rest of the operations seem to be going smoothly."

"**Good, proceed with the fortifications of your outpost. Also, though technology may be primitive on this world keep a lookout for our super powered friends from that fortress due east.**"

"Roger that captain, we're not confiscating too much ground so hopefully they won't think we're invading."

"**Contact and diplomacy will come soon enough to prevent confusion but for now let's just get things buttoned down. Lasky out.**"

As the ships finished their maneuvering they turned on their powerful searchlights and lit up the perimeter bathing the dark forests in bright light. From above it looked like a ring a light and activity with spotlights blooming outward from the various checkpoints and newly created outposts. To the people of this world it must have been a quite a sight to behold.

* * *

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**Native life form fort, main building**

Looking out her dorm room window Louise was in awe at what she was seeing from the mystery visitors. She had been stirred from her time writing in her diary about the day's troublesome events when she and every person in the academy heard the canon shots fired from the things. To everyone's surprise they all saw Tabitha fleeing from the direction their direction while being chased by a magic beam of light, apparently the big object fired on her when she got too close. Now she was staring at the response, dragons and other manner of flying beast poured from every one of the strange things. Maybe Tabitha was right, maybe those are indeed air ships. The dragons spread out and started to land in the surrounding forests before taking off again, strange thing was that no riders seemed to be visible on them. When night fell most of the students and staff were able to settle down from the day's strange occurrences but now the halls were in disarray as students, staff, and faculty flooded to the courtyards to see the latest state of affairs. Stepping outside her room she immediately ran into none other than Kirche the one who had refueled her frustration and sorrows over not summoning a familiar.

"Watch where you're going Zerbst," Louise straightened herself after the fire mage slammed into her, "What's the big rush anyway?" though she could already guess the answer given the other students hurrying to get outside.

Kirche shook her head from the sudden impact and addressed Louise. "Oh Louise, I don't know if you've noticed but it seems were being invaded ," she gestured to a window in the hall facing the airships and swarming dragons, "that's what they appear to be doing anyway." She began walking to the exit with a hurried pace Louise in tow.

"Yes, I've been watching ever since Tabitha got the big one to fire cannons at her. What in the world was she thinking?" They both entered a front lobby area for the female dormitories before Kirche stopped her hurried walk and face Louise with a nervous expression.

"Heh, heh I maaaay have hade at little something to do with that, " she closed her eyes and nervously scratched the back of her head, "Tabitha was like really curious about getting to see those things up close. Soooo I may have kind of you know… pressured her into to going. I wanted her to come back and tell us all about it." Kirche did not expect Louise to shove her back with enough force to almost trip her up. "Whoah Valliere, what do you think you're doing!"

Louise looked up at her rival with a less than pleased expression plastered on her face; some of the other girls stopped to look thinking the two would finally get into an un-noble like catfight. "So you convinced her to go because you were curious!? How careless are you Zerbst!? Everyone knows you and Tabitha are best of friends and you would let her think it's a good idea to almost be killed out of curiosity!?" Louise grabbed Kirche by her sleeve and yanked her towards the exit. "Tabitha is probably being chewed out by the headmaster and you're going to explain your part in this."

"H-hold on Louise…" She tried to slow down a bit but Louise was persistent in dragging her along.

As they made it outside they could see students and staff gathered out in the courtyards and tower walkways. Even from this distance the academy was dimly lit by the strong magic lanterns, Louise assumed they were lanterns, of those ships. Students were all talking at once about the new occurrences and filled the area with a chorus of unintelligible voices and sound most of them fearful of some sort of invasion going on. At the front gate Tabitha, Colbert, and Osmond stood, the two older men seemed to be scolded the blunette.

"Well Miss Tabitha you seem to have triggered a martial response from our guest and may have placed everyone in this academy and the surrounding region in danger." Osmond stroked his beard while delivering Tabitha's charges rather calmly.

Colbert on the other hand was sporting a much more upset tone. "They seemed to have been keeping to themselves but now they're spreading out from the landing site Brimir only knowing what their intentions are. Tell me Tabitha, what would you do now if this is some kind of elven attack you've triggered."

"Not sure." The possibility of them being elves did cross her mind when she and Kirche were talking about taking a closer look, but she had figured if it was invading elves they would have attacked as soon as they showed up in Tristain. She never anticipated nor meant for this kind of response from them.

"Ahem!"

The trio turned to the voice trying to gain their attention.

"I believe this one has a confession to make." Louise was referring to a nervous Kirche whom she was dragging along beside her. Kirche held up her hand weakly to acknowledge what Louise was saying.

"Well… you see…"

"Out with it Miss Zerbst," Osmond ordered her fixing a stern and studying gaze upon her and given the seriousness of the situation not her chest.

"Well I was just as curious about the newcomers as Tabitha was and when she suggested she was thinking of taking a closer look instead of telling her it was a terrible idea like I should have I pressured her into going. I kind of covered for her while she got to Slyphid without the academy guards noticing." She looked down finding the grass suddenly interesting. "I'm sorry."

Colbert crossed his arms. "I should have figured the other half of the dynamic duo was involved, something this brash didn't seem like Tabitha would pull off by on her own initiative."

"I believe you have someone more deserving of your apologies Miss Zerbst," Osmond stated, "Not only did you help her to risk her life and many others, moreover it took Miss Valliere to bring you out here to else you would have sat in your dorm."

Kirche gulped and looked up at Tabitha who was expressionless. "I'm sorry Tabby, I uh shouldn't have convinced you to do that." Looking at Tabitha it seemed like she did not care but Kirche being her best friend could tell what she was feeling from the many subtleties in her body language; she was not mad at all or holding any ill feelings. Kirche let out a thin smile.

"How you two will be punished will be handled tomorrow morning after our talk with Miss Valliere regarding the current events." Louise looked to the headmaster, confusion painted on her face.

"Talk? About the… you mean those things? Wh-" She was caught off by Osmond who simply ignored her queries and gave Colbert an order.

"Professor Colbert, you and the other faculty get these students back to their dorms immediately. They, he referred to the unknown forces, seemed to have stopped their outward advance but we don't know what tomorrow may bring."

"I'll get right on it Old Osmond." Colbert used his nickname seeing as how they were not in a formal situation like the faculty meeting.

The two men walked off leaving to three girls to go back to their dorms themselves, "So… " Kirche started.

"Goodnight night Zerbst, try to be a better friend next time." Louise bluntly stated and walked off at a steady pace back to the female dorms. She may hate the Germanian girl but Tabitha was one of the few students who never picked on her, in fact she mostly kept to herself. She had gone through the trouble of doing all that for Tabitha's sake if anything.

Kirche ignored the blonde's little jab at her, I'll let that little victory go for now she thought knowing that she had a point. Smirking as she watched Louise disappear into the crowd of students returning to her room she turned to Tabitha. Tabitha you must be so shaken up right now over what happened, come spend the night in my room again, we can hang out while I make it up to you.

While not apparent outwardly Tabitha was indeed a little shaken up about being fired upon and triggering the response from the ships, she just wanted to go to her own room to reflect on what happened and what would be in store for everyone. Besides she wasn't mad at Kirche, it was as much her decision to go as it was Kirche's. "Going to my room," she flatly stated.

"Nonsense," Kirche held her shoulders and led her away, "Tomorrow we'll have to face the bearded reaper and possibly those things so let's have fun before that!"

Tabitha found herself being dragged away by Kirche, again, she figured spending some time with her only friend at the academy wouldn't hurt, there would be plenty of time tomorrow for contemplating.

* * *

Louise watched the ring of colossal ships in the distance from her dorm room window their powerful light magic sweeping over the land around them as if looking for something. In the forest tree line in the distance she could see light and movement in the darkened woods no doubt the visitors moving about. For now they seemed to have halted their sudden outward advance but Brimir only knew what tomorrow would bring. What do those things have to do with me she wondered, what is Osmond going to talk to her about? The Headmaster's word still lingered in her mind but for now she would need to rest and await what tomorrow brings. She got in bed and fell into a restless slumber as the dim light of the magic lights shone through her window.


	3. Contact Halkeginia pt 2

**[A/N] Hello again, I would just again like to thank everyone for all the follows and comments this story has been receiving. About this chapter you might have noticed by the scroll bar that it is obscenely long, over 12,000 words. Had I not broken it into two parts then Contact Halkeginia would've been over 20,000 words and a dreadfully long read. I keep telling myself that after the first two long chapters I can start to shorten things a bit but it seems I can't do so due to so much that needs to be said or done. Needless to say I will try to make chapters not too long in the future as best I can.**

**A commenter voiced their concerns about story abandonment and let me just clarify now that I have a story and plot in mind for this and a good way to end it so I plan to see this through to the end if life allows. That said, with work, upcoming Fall semester and other things that come up don't expect frequent updates but I'll try to avoid making the wait between chapters dreadfully long as well.**

**That also brings me to the plot of this story. I was going to base the FoZ side of this story off the anime but after Robo Reader 21's suggestion that I go with the novel's plot I took a quick look at some summaries and found that the novel works far better with the Halo plot I have planned. That said, reading up on the novels will also be time consuming but I feel it'll be for the best.**

**Thanks to those who pointed out the various vehicles that belong to different branches of the military but I will continue to use them anyway as well as others. Only having warthogs, scorpions, mantises, and pelicans would be kind of dull in my opinion. When I introduced the falcon I did mention that it was a new variant, a variant put in use by other branches perhaps? Imagine a falcon that's a little longer and has sliding doors covering the sides with the gunner seats being the open part, also seats two more passengers. Sort of like a Blackhawk helicopter.**

**Thanks again for reading, don't forget to comment and let me know of any mistakes I may make and sorry in advance for any grammatical errors you see despite my best attempts at proofreading. Again always leave your input and suggestions as well, some of you may notice your ideas being used this in this one. Here's the next chapter.**

* * *

**Chapter 3: Contact Halkeginia part two**

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**Native life form town, large palace**

Morning rays of sunlight poured through an ornate window at the Tristain royal palace in the capital city of Tristania bathing it in soft orange yellow warmth. The rather large chamber was in fact the queen's bedroom which was lavishly decorated with fine linens, paintings, furnishings, and other such luxuries. The sunlight's morning call proved unnecessary as the queen was already up and making ready for her tasks as ruling monarch for the day, and given recent events she would have much to do. She was still emotionally distraught over her husband's, Henry de Tristain, death and could barely maintain the strength to deal with the burdens of leadership on top of her grief. Henrietta, her daughter, had taken the responsibility of ruling and decision making in the court due to the queen's mental state but she was currently in Germania making marriage arrangements for her marriage. That in itself was yet another burden on her heart, her daughter having to marry the Germanian emperor for the good and safety of the Tristainian people. Brimir knows she would rather her daughter not take such a heavy burden upon herself but she just couldn't bear to marry the emperor herself as he would not want a middle age grieving widow. But just when the queen felt like she could not be stricken with any more burdens a strange occurrence suddenly manifests inside her kingdom. Last afternoon everyone in the capital witnessed a fireball streak across the sky flanked by mysterious objects. The fireball impacted a ways from the Academy of Magic in the distance, kicking up a massive cloud of dust and causing a panic in the city.

"There, you're ready your majesty Marianne, you look stunning as always," said Marianne's personal maid servant who was assisting in getting her into her elaborate dress.

"Thank you Angeline, you may take your leave to have breakfast," Marianne responded gratefully.

Marianne just stood and watched the maid being let out by the door guards to go about her own business; the queen herself had much to attend to as during yesterday's emergency meeting in court they had received a message from headmaster Osmond regarding the mysterious visitors in her country. From their closer position to them the academy staff had determined that they were actually massive ships of unknown make and origin, though Osmond and even her royal advisors hinted at the possibility of elves. That would be the last thing Tristain would need, an elven crusade, but the elves as far as anyone knew had no reason to attack Halkeginia as they already jealously guard the holy lands to the east. However incoming reports from fleeing citizens last night did not help to clarify much after the sudden and aggressive move from the new arrivals, farmers and villagers abandoned their fields and homes reporting that unknown soldiers and monsters started moving outward from the ships. Due to the darkness none could give a detailed account of them other than them being humanoid and under control of growling beast with glowing eyes. Many creatures of the wilds could fit that description but she highly doubted that orcs in any way, shape, or form could do something like this let alone build ships. Reports of unknown and powerful magic being used on one of the academy students and magic light illuminating the forests like daylight also hinted the possibility of elves and their magic.

"_Please hurry home Henrietta, this is all becoming too much for me right now,_" Marianne thought. Since last night things have been tense as the military had been placed on alert and the generals were giving her mixed messages, some wanting to engage the possible enemies and others opting for caution seeing as how the advancing unknown soldiers seemed to have stopped for now. One side argued that if they are elves then they must attack now for the good of all the Brimiric nations while Romalia prepares for a crusade. On the other hand some military advisors pointed out that the move seemed to be just meant for forming a defensive perimeter around their downed vessel and that diplomacy could prevent another premature holy war from breaking out. For now she had ordered the city's garrison of soldiers to amass outside the walls and prepare for any possible assault while sending scouts to observe the unknowns, taking care not to provoke them of course. Like Osmond she had also issued a decree that no citizen or royal solider wander too close to the colossal ships.

"Your Highness Viscount Wardes is here," there was a sudden knock on the chamber door as the guards announced the new arrival, "shall I let him in?"

"Yes please do." The doors swung open revealing Jean-Jacques Francis Viscount de Wardes, captain of the griffin knights, standing at the entrance answering his queen's summons. Wardes a young man who looked to be a young man with silver hair and goatee that made him look older strode into the room and bowed respectfully to Marianne before addressing her.

"Viscount Wardes at your service my queen, what may you have summoned me here for?" He straightens himself and looks to Marianne awaiting her orders.

Marianne looked to him and smiled warmly, "Ah Viscount, it's good to see that you are calm and calm collected as ever during this trying time. Apparently other officers in the Tristainian military were acting more panicked and shaken by the recent events which demoralized and put fear into the soldiers.

"We all must maintain a calm spirit and mind if we are to make the most rational decisions regarding our guests."

Marianne nodded, "Indeed, now on to our business." She walked over to the window and gazed outside at the sun rising above the forests in the distance. "Captain I need you and your knights to prepare for battle in the event that those ships are indeed invaders. I don't know what we could possibly do against such a foe but the griffin knights and the royal navy will attempt to hold them off. We may be close to war here Wardes. The city garrisons are preparing to move out if necessary and I've sent word to Gramont to rally the forces of the other lords in preparation for an attack."

"And what of Romalia, how will they be involved in this?" Wardes queried.

"For now until we can confirm exactly if we are dealing with elves then we will remain silent for now, we are vulnerable right now and the longer it take those Reconquista thugs to find out about our situation the better. Besides I'm sure news of our new guests is already spreading through Halkeginia as we speak, I'm sure the fireball and objects descending from the sky into our country were not that hard to miss."

"Yes, well given the circumstances Reconquista is the least of our troubles right now. Will this in affect the marriage and alliance with Germania? They will most likely call off the alliance if we are under attack by those things."

"You and the others must have no doubt noted their defensive behavior and we cannot rule out the possibility that they had no intention of being in this situation, I still wish for a peaceful outcome to this dilemma." Marianne closed her eyes in deep thought, contemplating any nonviolent resolutions to the situation.

"Well if they are indeed elves then a peaceful outcome may not be possible and the church would view such an action as heresy."

The queen sighed deeply, "Let us hope it does not come to that Wardes," that would mean her kingdom would become the focal point for anther holy war and would certainly burn to ashes. This was becoming too much for her, "_I can manage till Henrietta returns home at the very least_," she thought. "Let us leave now Viscount, the court is waiting."

Wardes watched expressionless as the queen moved over to the door which was being held open by the guards, both bowing to her, he then followed her out with her escort in tow. "_This most definitely changes things, hopefully the marriage will be called off but then there's the issue of those ships. No time to make a report now. _"

Following behind they made their way to the courts where no doubt more discussion about what to do about the unknown ships as well as deal with the frightened citizens of the local villages seeking refuge from what they considered an invasion. They all had a stressful day ahead of them, especially the mentally exhausted queen.

* * *

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**UNSC Infinity crash site area**

"Everything's cool back here sir, the engines are at a suitable temperature for inspection you can send the rest of the maintenance teams." Saito was currently on top of one the Infinity's thrusters helping to prepare for a visual inspection of the damage. Wearing a heat and radiation resistant hazmat suit designed for engine and reactor inspections he used his diagnostics scanner to check to temperature of the thruster units as they remain dangerously hot even after shutdown. Though the ship had a suite of sensors on the exterior that monitored system temperature and condition a tech still needed to physically confirm that working conditions were safe, Saito still remembered the safety vids about the Buenos Aires incident a couple years ago in which some technicians were vaporized by a reactor emission due to a sensor malfunction. He was also being hoisted down from above to take a physical look inside the thruster itself, one of his seniors called to him on radio.

"**Hiraga, take a quick look around in there and tell us if anything looks off.**"

Switching on his helmet mounted flashlight Saito complied and took a look around the interior of the of the thruster unit. "Aside from the expected scorching of the interior everything looks to be in fine order, whatever's wrong with the engines must be internal."

Dr. Glassman suddenly chimed in on their net. "**Hmm, I figured as much. This damn Forerunner tech is so unpredictable, but, I guess I should know that by now. Anyway Lieutenant, have the rest of the techs begin a thorough inspection of exterior systems.**"

"**Alright Hiraga the other teams will be handling the rest of the inspections so we're bringing you up now.**" The chain suspending Saito in the air began to reel back up bringing him with it. "**You did well for your first thruster inspection kid, you don't seem to have a fear of heights and you remained calm; most other guys think the engines will suddenly flare up.**"

"_Not like that's never happened before…_" Saito thought. Reaching the top he pulled himself on top of the thruster unit pulling off the bulky hazmat suit's helmet.

"You're a regular Spartan now eh Hiraga?" a fellow technician said.

"The more experienced guys and the gasbags will handle the rest from here so go ahead and take a quick break Hiraga."

Taking a look around Saito marveled at the scenery, an unknown and uncharted world. To the east and far off in the distance was a massive island, but the most interesting thing about it was… its floating! It was one of the first things any of the marines noticed during their initial deployment on the surface, sheer white cliff faces with jagged rocks jutting out from the underside. "_Hope we get a chance to check that out sometime,_" Saito thought. Around the immediate region there were many little villages and small towns that dotted the forests and grassy fields below. Nearby was the pentagon shaped fortress structure where the weird super powered people were, the footage of them was the talk of the town aboard the Infinity and no doubt the other ships too, further away was the largest town. This one was surrounded by large walls and had a large palace situated in the center. Placing his helmet back on Saito used the zoom feature on the optics to take a closer look. "_Flying ships, floating islands, magic people, and dragons, this must be some kind of fairy tale planet or something._" In the distance he could see what appeared to be flying 16th century man o' war ships with wings and what appeared to be flying lions and a few dragons. Things surely seem to have taken a turn for the surreal on this planet, removing his helmet again Saito walked back over to his superiors who were calling him.

* * *

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**UNSC Infinity, Bridge**

"**Everything's clear here at checkpoint Foxtrot sir, nothing moving.**"

"**We've got some IR signatures in the foliage watching us to our west about umm… about a hundred meters, proceeding as normal but will monitor.**"

"**Captain Lasky the unknowns are holding steady no major movement from up here sir.**"

"Affirmative, keep your eyes on them commanders be ready for anything."

"**Aye Aye sir!**"

Lasky finished giving out orders to the frigates and ground teams to remain on high alert following the military buildup of the human natives of this world. Outside the largest of the nearby towns, the one that featured a large castle, a buildup of soldiers and equipment was forming and facing their direction. On top of that they have been discreetly monitoring several scouts attempting to hide from them in the trees and underbrush of the forests before leaving to relay whatever information they obtained from observing the checkpoints and patrols. Lasky had ordered the patrols to not confront or engage them in anyway unless threatened, just act like they don't know they are there.

"Roland, patch captains Richmond and DeSanta through we need discuss our next move and I have an idea I wish to share with them."

"Aye Aye Captain, contacting them now," Roland complied.

After a few moments video feed of Richmond and DeSanta appeared on screens in front of Lasky's station. "Gentlemen," Lasky started, "it's time we addressed the growing security issue to our East."

Captain DeSanta replied, "**Yeah well I don't think they pose that much of a threat Lasky, you've seen what their soldiers are comprised of.**"

"Yes, I'm well aware of that, Roland, bring up the live feed again." On another screen high resolution live video of the amassing soldiers outside the walls of the large town, or city given the technological time period of these people. The force was comprised of lightly armored infantry, some more heavily armored knights, and men riding atop winged lion-like beast with eagle heads. "As you can see the, for now, neutral force seems to be made up mostly of infantry equipped for melee combat; swords, shields, axes, things like that."

"**The problem is the still unknown powers they possess,**" Captain Richmond commented, "**those aren't kids from that fortress, they look like they can use whatever that ability of theirs is to put on some serious hurtin'.**" He referred to the armored knights that were warming up with their swords and more importantly with their 'magic' powers.

"**Looks like those knight guys and the ones riding those ah… griffins are the only ones using those powers,**" DeSanta added, "**they might pose a real problem if we take enemy contact.**"

Lasky thought about that for a moment. "I think it's a little too soon to be referring to them as enemy, right now they don't know who we are or what our intentions are, same for us." Lasky tapped a few commands into his command console and an image of a M2859 materiel acquisition pod appeared on screen. "I have here my idea for at least attempting to reach out and peacefully contact the people of this world, we're stuck here for the time being and we might as well try to be friendly with the new neighbors."

"As opposed to obliterating a technologically inferior species, not too different from the Covenant," Roland interjected.

"Not now Roland," Lasky sternly berated the orange AI letting him know he wasn't in the mood for jokes. "This here is an ordinance pod that I've already taken the liberty of modifying to make contact with the locals."

Roland gave them the details, "The pod has had its weapon storage unit outfitted with speakers and a projector, the speakers should air a peace message as well as projecting imagery that hopefully helps convey our message."

"**And how are we supposed to know if they can even understand our message?**" Richmond asked bringing up a good point.

"It's a shot in the dark but based on the similarities in architecture, ship design, and military of these people to around 16th century Europe the plan is to play the message in multiple languages in the hope that they might be able to at least understand some of what's being said. If they're still stumped the holo projector will display images that hopefully get the message across anyway."

"**And if they do get the message, what's our course of action then?**" DeSanta asked.

"**We just wait for them to send the welcome wagon,**" Richmond answered back, "**simple.**"

"**Well there's two types of 'welcome wagons' they could send, one, they come over and invite us over for dinner, or two, they think we're attacking and launch an assault.**"

"If they want to negotiate then I'll go down there personally to talk with them, if they want a fight," Lasky paused for a moment, "we'll fire everything. A missile salvo should completely neutralize that force if they turn hostile."

"**If we don't try to reach out now and explain ourselves then it looks like they're going to try something anyway, let's launch the pod.**" Richmond said agreeing with the plan.

"**Where are we dropping our welcome gift to then Lasky?**"

Lasky pointed to the pentagonal fortress, "Since one of the inhabitants of that structure seemed so awfully curious last night we'll see if maybe they'll take the opportunity to meet us in person."

"That's if they aren't too peeved about us shooting at one of their kids earlier," Roland pointed out.

"We can apologize for that when the time comes. Roland, prepare a firing solution for the pod, drop it right inside the walls."

"Aye Aye sir, I'll try to set it in the courtyard area right inside the main gate."

"**I hope this works Lasky,**" DeSanta said.

Thwump! Lasky heard the muffled sound of the ordinance pod firing from its launch tube. "Package away Captain, estimated fifteen seconds to impact, now we just wait for a reply."

"I hope this works too…" Lasky said flatly to himeslef.

* * *

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**Native life form structure, Central tower**

The Tristain Academy of Magic is currently bristling with activity as last night's events have left them to deal with many peasant villagers seeking a place to flee to in the wake of what they assumed to be an invasion. After the initial outward push by the unknown people of those strange ships they seem to have reverted back to staying to themselves and have made no further advances since. Kirche and Tabitha's little plan must have really spooked them, triggering such a response and the ire of the headmaster. The two of them were summoned to his office early in the morning to receive an earful and punishment from the old man. That's where Louise de la Valliere currently finds herself, sitting in a chair and waiting outside the headmaster's office listening to the aforementioned students being chewed out by Old Osmond as well as Professor Colbert. The both of them said they wanted to talk to her about what was currently happening with regards to the giant ships and a servant had been sent to fetch her from her dorm room.

"_What in the name of Brimir do they think I have to do with any of this? Maybe this is about kicking me out of the academy, what if they-_" Her thoughts were cut short when Osmond's secretary, Miss Longueville, opened the door and beckoned her to enter.

"Lady Valliere, the headmaster will see you now, please, come inside."

Louise followed the green haired woman's orders and proceeded into the office, Longueville closing the doors behind her. Inside Kirche and Tabitha were both sitting to the side on a pair of chairs; Kirche had her head down with her hair shading her eyes while Tabitha was reading her book as always. Sitting at his desk the headmaster was waiting for her with Colbert standing to the side. Louise took a seat in front of them and waited for whatever they had to say to her.

"Let us cut straight to the point Miss Valliere," Osmond started while looking straight at Louise, "Yesterday during the familiar summoning ceremony you allegedly failed to summon a familiar, correct?"

Louise dejectedly looked down seemingly taking interest in the floor boards; she was hoping that her failure would not be the topic of this meeting. "Yes," was all she could say in response to the question.

"Tell me Miss Valliere, when you performed your summoning spell did you feel anything different or odd? Was there something, anything, which you took the liberty of changing with your summoning circle or incantation?"

Louise could feel the pressure of Osmond and Colbert staring at her waiting for an answer, behind her Kirche and Tabitha took interest in the interrogation the latter not overtly showing so. "I-I just did the spell as the textbooks said to do it, I made my circle as perfect as I could and I changed a few words in the incantation but not as much as anyone else would have." Louise was feeling pressured and confused, looking up at the headmaster she asked, "What's this all about?"

Osmond glanced over to Colbert who nodded at him and proceeded to explain. "Louise we're asking if there was anything odd about your summoning because we believe there may be a correlation between your 'failed' spell and the appearance of those ships. Essentially there's a chance you did not fail at all, this is just a theory but we still need to address the possibility."

Louise perked up quickly at that sudden revelation to her involvement in all of this, Kirche was now fully paying attention with her eyes wide and Tabitha was now clearly staring at Louise. She was at a loss for words, her mouth opened and closed repeatedly trying to find the rights words.

"W-W-WHAT!? You think I summoned those things!? T-there's no way! I-I-I…"

Colbert raised his hand up in an attempt to settle her down, "Please calm down Louise, I said it was only a theory and given that your summoning coincided with their appearance it's something we must take into account."

"That said, if those things are in fact your familiars in some way then we find ourselves in a delicate situation," Osmond continued, "we may be able to prevent any conflict for the time being by explaining the situation to them. If they were summoned then they possibly have no idea where they are and are just as confused as we are, whoever or whatever they may be. If they are here by their own design however then our nation is in a very vulnerable position right now, against ships such as those I'm sure our navy stands no chance."

"So what you're saying is that it might be better if I did somehow summon those things after all?" Louise asked.

Osmond and Colbert did not answer.

"Great, that's just perfect." "_It would be just my stupid luck to summon a bunch of angry monstrosities, but then again..._" Louise looked up at both of the teachers with a hopeful look on her face. "Does this mean I'm a real mage now? You said it yourselves; I did successfully summon something albeit something totally unexpected."

Colbert answered her, "We cannot deny or confirm whether you did indeed bring them here, the only way to know for sure would be to communicate with them and ask them the circumstances of their being here."

"However last night's events with Miss Tabitha over there," Tabitha suddenly found her book to be more interesting again, "I'm not too sure they seem to want to talk right now as they have made it clear they want no possible threats anywhere near them. That is if they are even here unwillingly as we have discussed." "_If they are actually elves then we can forget about it,_" he thought. "Unless they show they want to communicate with us then any attempt at diplomacy is far too dangerous for the moment."

SCREEEEEE!... THUD!

As if on cue there was a very loud sound of an impact coming from the main courtyard along with a brief and light shaking of the building. Down below panicked shrieks and screams of various students could be heard.

"EEEEK!"

"Oh no!"

"We're being attacked!"

"Brimir help us!"

All the current occupants of the headmaster's office rushed over to the window overlooking the courtyard, down below they witnessed frightened students and familiars running for cover from whatever it was that impacted the ground. Amidst a cloud of dust stood a strange object the likes of which none of them had ever seen before.

"Hurry we must get down there!" Colbert yelled, that was all that was said as they all rushed down to the main courtyard.

* * *

Down in the courtyard fear and panic had given way to curiosity as a crowd of students and teachers flocked around the object that crashed into their academy. The staff was trying to keep the students away from the object as they had no idea what it might do. "Stay back! We don't know what that thing is or if it's dangerous," a campus guard barked at the crowd of teenagers. The crowd split in two to make way for the headmaster with Colbert, Louise, Tabitha, and Longueville in tow.

"Everyone please stand back," Osmond ordered, "Colbert come with me we're going to investigate this."

"You girls wait here," Colbert said to the trio of female students with him, "Miss Longueville, please watch over them."

"Yes of course, do be careful you two." The secretary was visibly worried for their safety.

Osmond and Colbert slowly approached the strange object before them; it was some sort of dark grey metallic pillar partially embedded into the ground with an odd angular shape to it. "I don't detect anything magical about it," Osmond said after waving his staff towards the pillar using a spell to detect any magic energy.

Colbert was about to speak when a blue light flickered on atop the pillar and an image magically appeared in the air in front of them. Startled, Osmond and Colbert took a few quick steps back while the on looking crowd was in awe. A blue spectral image of the largest of the visiting ships appeared in front of the pillar seemingly emanating from the blue light source. Below it four strange glyphs could be seen, a completely strange language consisting of curving and twisting letters.

"What sort of magic is this? I don't detect anything." Colbert stated.

The image changed to two people on a cobbled road meeting and shaking hands with the ship in the background behind one man and what looked like a representation of the academy behind the other.

Eyes widening Colbert looked to Osmond to see if he was starting to get the message here. "Osmond, this is…"

"Indeed, an invitation." Osmond stated confidently.

What the object did next shocked everyone even more, it started to speak. At first it kept speaking in a strange language or several languages but then it said a phrase in a language that some of those present could understand. Albionian. "We mean you no harm, we wish to talk and negotiate, we will meet with you." The students and teachers who understood Albionian were too shocked to speak. The pillar started speaking in more gibberish languages before more familiar ones hit everyone's ears, they could all recognize Germanian, Gallian, Romalian, and Tristainian. The same message seemed to be repeating in a variety of different languages most of which were completely foreign and never heard of before. The courtyard was immediately abuzz with excited conversation, the arrivals could speak some of their languages and on top of that wanted to say hello. The students and teachers were all very curious about what magic allowed the pillar to talk and emit such vivid spectral images.

"Osmond, what do you want to do now? This is exactly the turn of events we've hoped for," Colbert said excitedly.

"We answer their call of course, the royal guards continue to amass outside the capitol and this is our chance to defuse the situation."

Colbert looked towards the circle of ships in the distance, "I will go and try to open communications with them, and according to the images we saw they are human after all. Louise, it would be best if you came with me to help explain the possible situation regarding the familiar summoning."

"Yes that would be best indeed," Osmond said, "Miss Zerbst and Miss Tabitha you two should go as well, you can assist in the event something goes wrong as well as explain to them that little stunt of yours last night." Osmond turned to a guard and gave an order, "Go get four horses from the stables, have them ready for travel immediately."

"Right away headmaster," replied the guard as he hurried off to prepare the horses.

"Why Zerbst!? We don't need some uncultured Germanian potentially ruining any diplomatic relations!" Louise apparently did not mind or simply did not care that Tabitha was coming along and her outburst earned her a glare from Kirche before the redhead merely smirked, shrugging off the insults.

"You should be more worried about yourself Zero, I imagine they'll be none too pleased about you abducting them but I suppose you can't help but do everything wrong after all."

Louise was about to fall for the fire mage's trap, again and start a big fuss when Colbert interrupted. "Not now, both of you! This is a very serious situation and if we want a positive outcome from this meeting then we need calm and clear heads."

"Yes sir…" the both of them muttered, Kirche upset that she could not rile up Louise some more and Louise upset because she had let the fire mage get a rise out of her.

When the horses were ready the three students and one teacher set off to meet the new neighbors under the excited gaze of the rest of the academy.

* * *

**Surface of Unnamed Planet, 2558**

**UNSC Infinity crash site area, checkpoint Bravo-3**

"Look at those monsters; they're even larger than they look when you get up close!" Kirche marveled at the sheer size of what was supposed to be airships as well as the others. The small band of mages had been traveling on horseback back for about thirty or so minutes before reaching the ring of ships floating above them. Flame and Slyphid were also accompanying their masters though Tabitha told her familiar to remain groundside to avoid provoking them again. As they advanced down the cobbled road Colbert began to feel worried about not encountering anyone.

"We seem to have reached their perimeter but no one's here, everyone keep on alert and your eyes peeled."

Tabitha noticed something as they were coming around a bend in the road. "Look…" Around the bend the road was blocked by barbed metal coils of some sort and barriers made of sandbags set up across the path. The group froze; behind the barrier were people and not just any type of people but soldiers by the looks of them. Their armor and weapons looked very odd but based on the ones not wearing helmets they could be at least relieved to know they were dealing with humans after all. However their strange appearance was not the most worrying thing about them, it was the fact that they were already alert to their presence and had their 'weapons' pointed in the group's direction.

"Everyone stay calm and don't do anything brash," Colbert calmly warned his students, he and Tabitha were remarkably calm in the face of this new threat.

The soldiers at the roadblock then started to shout at them in Albionian, "Freeze motherfuckers, hands!"

"Stay right there, not one step closer!"

"Hands up! Identify yourselves now!"

Slowly the group did as they were told and raised their hands in the air but still ready to act if needed. The soldiers were none like any they have ever seen, they were all dressed in what appeared to be light armor that was a mix of black and white plating topped with a very oddly shaped helmet. After a brief tension filled pause something came out of the brush behind them. Turning their heads the mages were shocked to see several golems appearing from the forest behind them. "_How did we not notice them before?_" Colbert thought. The golems were adorned and strange armor of varying shapes and colors as well as single orange eyes bearing down on them. The golems moved quickly and nimbly for constructs as large and elaborately armored as them and moved into position to cover them with the same weird weapons as the other soldiers. Colbert was impressed with the skill and power it must have taken to make such constructs out of earth, he glanced back to the rather vulgar sounding soldiers wondering who was the mage those golems belonged to. Then the lead golem did something unexpected, it started to talk.

"Cool it marines, the captain's been expecting a probe to come this way so these guys must be it," its voice was strong and commanding and the soldiers at the roadblock lowered their weapons, "Madsen, Hoya, move up and check them for any surprises. Carefully. I'll radio this in."

Overcoming his initial shock of talking golems Colbert attempt to negotiate. "Now gentlemen I'm sure we can work this out peacefully," despite no longer having weapons pointed their way the students and teacher still had their hands halfway raised, "we're simply here on your offer to talk and negotiate."

"Then you're exactly what we've been expecting, don't worry your safe here so long as you don't try anything stupid." The golem, or knight as they were starting to suspect, paused for a moment before continuing. "And why don't you have your pets come out from hiding," he gestured down the path they came from with his head, "we don't want any misunderstandings now."

Tabitha waved her hand in the air and Kirche whistled to signal their familiars to come out, when they came out they were being flanked by more golems who had them covered with their weapons. The other soldiers tensed up and readied their weapons at the dragon and fire salamander wary of the presence of the intimidating creatures. Colbert was already beginning to figure out their strange weapons were some kind of firearms, "_Such an odd design for a musket, perhaps I'll get a chance to study them later,_" he thought.

"Alright this'll only take a moment and it's nothing that'll hurt ya' so just relax." Two of the golems, or knights, approached and began to check them as their apparent leader had ordered. They took a weird rectangular object from their waist and pointed it at Tabitha; a flat ray of light came out and swept up and down Tabitha's body. The four mages tensed up at the sudden use of strange magic but relaxed again when Tabitha seemed to be just fine. "Alright she's clean. See, no harm at all."

"_Clean?_"_ Tabitha thought, "Why would they worry about my cleanliness? Is that what that magic did, clean me? Interesting, strange, but interesting._"

They continued to do the same thing to the rest of them one at a time with their strange wand. "Alright, no weapons on any of them team leader," one of the golem knights hollered back to his leader, "this one has a walking stick with her but it should be fine."

"Staff," Tabitha corrected.

"Yeah, that's her magic staff," Kirche told them, "aren't you worried about our wands?" She couldn't comprehend why they would worry about searching for weapons and yet be fine with them openly having magic foci.

"Magic?" The leader of the golem knights sounded bewildered about the idea of the staff being magical before he seemed to remember something. "Shit that's right! Drop it now, right there on the ground, all of you!"

Tabitha grudgingly complied and the 3 other mages pulled out their wands and dropped them as well. The golem knight seemed satisfied with that and Colbert spoke with him again. "When will we get the opportunity to speak with your commanding officers sir knight?"

The golem knight paused and stared at Colbert for a moment unsure of what to make of the title just given to him. "Uhh, right… I contacted Captain Lasky and he'll be coming down to meet you personally."

"Excellent, I'm sure we all have much to discuss and explain." Colbert was bewildered about how he could have possibly contacted anybody so quickly from here but given the magic they have shown so far he was certain it was just more of their unknown abilities. "_If these are knights then those other soldiers might be commoner levies, can't be sure._" The four mages then just patiently waited for this Captain Lasky to arrive.

* * *

"Am I the only the one freaked by the fact that they're speaking French and English? Seriously, what the hell?" Hoya queried his thoughts on the situation over the Spartans private comms.

"Yeah, that was pretty weird when the bald guy spoke," Grant replied. All of them were shocked momentarily when the auto translators in the Spartan and marine helmets detected French and immediately translated their speech. Not only that, but after they first spoke the four contacts started to speak English as well.

"I'm more interested in that 'magic' stick of the blue haired one," Thorne said, "I can't believe magic is the explanation of the powers we've seen in the recon vids."

"How about their hair," Madsen added, "blue, pink, and bright red on that tan skinned one. That one's a fine specimen too if you know what I mean."

"Oh yeah, she's one fine looking woman, maybe we can do some more 'community outreach' as you and DeMarco call it."

"Those are clearly high school aged teens soldiers; let's show a little professionalism here" DeMarco sternly berated his Spartans for their unprofessional mindset in the situation they themselves in.

"What? You're one to talk DeMarco. It's not like they can hear us anyway, you getting all chivalrous and noble on us 'Sir Knight'?" Hoya teased his team leader over the title given to him by the bald native and gave a dramatic mock bow to him.

"Piss off Hoya," DeMarco turned to Hoya and aggressively pointed his way, "I don't know what that 'knight' shit was about but you're expressly forbidden from calling me that."

The four locals were all staring at them liked the Spartans were insane; since they had no idea the Spartans could communicate privately it looked like they were randomly pantomiming for no reason. To that end it must have seemed to them like the marines would often touch their heads and begin speaking to themselves as they would give them funny looks as well.

"Corporal, bring the hog back from patrol for added security," DeMarco contacted the marines driving the checkpoint's warthog on patrol, "park up to the sandbags and sweep the area."

"**Yes sir, on the way.**"

Several moments later the sound of the warthog's engine rumbled from within the forests visibly unsettling the locals, when the all-terrain vehicle rolled up out of the woodwork and parked next to the roadblock the four locals went wide eyed at the sight.

"W-what is that?"

"A horseless carriage? But how?"

"It sounds like a beast of some kind."

Thorne chuckled to himself; they had no idea that even though they were trying to whisper amongst themselves the Spartans could still hear them loud and clear. For people with such primitive technology this would not be the last of the surprises in store for them. Only thing to do now is wait for Captain Lasky to arrive.

* * *

"**I can't believe your idea actually worked Lasky,**" Captain DeSanta spoke over the radio as Lasky was prepping to leave to the meeting point.

"I can hardly believe it either," Lasky replied. His original plan was to hope that any human language would at least sound familiar enough to the natives here to get the rough meaning of their message, but when fireteam Majestic contacted him informing him that locals just walked up to their doorstep speaking French and English of all things everyone was very much surprised. Lasky walked up the ramp of a pelican dropship waiting in one of the shuttle bays and took a seat towards the rear while the crew chief helped to strap him in.

"Captain aboard!" the crew chief of the pelican shouted.

"**The welcome wagon came sooner than expected didn't it?**" Captain Robison asked over the net.

"The sooner the better anyway, maybe now we can get some answers and avoid another conflict."

"**Looks like our little air contact and her pet are there too,**" DeSanta pointed out the presence of the blunette at the meeting point, "**stay frosty Lasky. We're all covering from up here; if this is some sort of devious ploy to attack us our guns will lay waste to em'.**"

"Bon voyage Captain, be sure to send a postcard for me," a nearby projection of Roland joked.

Lasky looked at his data pad again watching live feed from the Spartan and marine helmet cams and noticed that the girl and dragon from last night were indeed present at the meeting. The other three, one teenage girl, a preteen girl, and one adult male were complete unknowns however.

"Be wary of the bald one Captain Lasky," Roland chimed in with a warning, "like Commander Palmer says we still have yet to observe the full capabilities of the adults."

"They seem cooperative for the time being and according to team leader DeMarco they want to negotiate just as much as we do." Still that didn't mean that Lasky wasn't being as cautious as possible. As the pelican lifted off and out of the hanger two of the new falcon variants filled with ODST troopers took the flanks as they flew out of the hanger and skimmed along the side of the ship. "Let's go greet the new neighbors, be on your best behavior troopers, you're representing the UNSC here." Lasky announced over the radio. After a chorus of affirmatives from the marines Lasky went back to looking out of the back of the pelican. As the captain of the largest and most important ship in the UNSC Lasky was the chief ambassador for the UEG and UNSC in this situation though honestly he would have preferred if Lord Hood was present. Unfortunately Hood's pelican, which was bringing him back from business he had to attend to aboard his flagship, peeled off as soon as the anomalies started. That was probably for the best anyway; the navy losing the Infinity as well as Hood would be too much for one day.

The trio of dropships peeled away from Infinity and sped off into the forest flying low over the canopy following the road. Lasky watched the treetops whiz by, admiring the rolling countryside and blue mountain ranges in the background. He had been cooped up in the ship since the crash landing and enjoyed this chance to get out and breathe some fresh air. "**We're approaching the LZ Captain Lasky,**" the pilot warned," **touchdown in twenty seconds!**" The troopers aboard the pelican locked and loaded their weapons and prepared for anything despite this being a supposed friendly meeting. The pelican and falcons reached the checkpoint where the native ambassadors were being detained, and lo and behold four locals were all standing in the center of the road looking like they had just seen a ghost. The pelican did a circle around the area while the falcons dropped off the trooper squads who immediately fanned out and swept the surrounding woods. When Lasky's dropship touched down on the path the troopers exited first and formed two lines opposite each other and saluted as Lasky disembarked. Strolling through the line he approached the Spartans detaining the four locals who were still staring in amazement at him save for the blunette. The Spartans saluted sharply as well as the marines from their positions.

"Captain Lasky, these are the locals who are answering our call, we've checked them for weapons and they're clean. They mentioned something about magic and those… sticks by their feet, given the reports we've seen we didn't take any chances letting them have hold of them." Spartan DeMarco finished his initial report and stepped aside for Lasky to meet the four natives.

Lasky stepped forward and approached the older gentlemen among them figuring he was the authority figure. "Hello there, Captain Thomas J. Lasky of the UNSC Infinity at your service." The balding man seemed perplexed at the mention of the ships name momentarily as Lasky held out his hand. Taking his hand and shaking it the bespectacled introduced himself as well.

"It is a pleasure to meet you Captain Lasky; I am Jean Colbert a professor at the Tristain Academy of Magic." He turned to the young girls behind him, "And these ladies are…"

The little pink haired girl introduced herself first. "Ahem. I am Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Valliere, a pleasure to make your acquaintance Sir Captain," she then curtsied politely.

"Hi there, my name is Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt-Zerbst of Germania, nice to meet you Captain." The crimson colored redhead finished by winking at him, Lasky remained unfazed or did not notice the gesture.

"Tabitha," was all the blunette, the shortest of them, said. Lasky noticed her eyes boring into him and analyzing every part of him; again he paid this no mind.

Nodding Lasky addressed them all, "A pleasure to meet all of you as well, now let's get down to business. You most likely want to know who we are and what we are doing here, correct?"

The man now identified as Colbert nodded, "Among many other things yes, though I am sure you have just as many questions for us."

"To start every ship you see here is part of the UNSC navy."

"UNSC?" Colbert asked confused.

"United Nations Space Command the military arm of the UEG, United Earth Government. Though you may or may not already suspect but we're not from this world, we come from planet called Earth as well as her many colonies among the stars."

Colbert was taken aback momentarily, "We figured you were not from around here but for you to not even be of this world is… astounding, almost unbelievable! But waht about your reason for visiting our world then?"

Lasky nodded again, "As for our reason for being here, all I can say is that it was completely involuntary. One moment we were with our fleet and the next we're on a portal ride to this planet." Colbert quickly glanced at the girl named Louise out of the corner of his eye. "The Infinity is grounded for the time being and it would be for the best for us to explain ourselves to your leadership Professor, so now some questions of our own. Where exactly are we?"

"Ah yes, you currently reside within the kingdom of Tristain which is located within Halkeginia, an area of land also consisting of Germania, Gallia, Romalia, and Albion. I'm sure the queen and princess will wish to negotiate what to do about your grounded ship as soon as possible."

Lasky briefly got in contact with the Infinity bridge, "Roland, process that locational data." He looked back to Colbert, "If you could arrange for such a meeting that would be much appreciated, as you can guess we're a little too high profile to just show up at a royal palace unannounced." Lasky thought about something for a moment, "Let me ask you another thing Colbert, what language am I currently speaking?"

Colbert looked puzzled at that question, "You're speaking Albionian of course, how could you not know that?"

"Actually what I'm speaking is called English, at least that's what it's called from where we come from."

"Oh of course, that makes sense. Our Albionian and your English being so similar is quite the amazing coincidence. So far everything I've seen of your people amazes me to no end and I should add that your magical feats are outstanding. May I ask what brand of magic your people use? I could not for the life of me put my finger on how you achieve the things you've been doing."

"Hmm, we don't use any form of 'magic' as you call it, just technology. Could you demonstrate to me what this magic of yours is?" Lasky figured this could be his chance to confirm the nature of these special powers the… Tristainians possessed.

Colbert seemed unconvinced with the claim that they used no form of magic but walked over to the pile of sticks on the ground picking one up. "Our magic works by focusing our willpower into a foci, or wand, such as this," he held out the wand for Lasky to see. "Let me demonstrate." He muttered some sort of incantation and surly enough a whip of flames emerged from the wand and curled and twisted above him. The Spartans and marines went on immediate alert and readied their weapons all of them amazed at what they were seeing even after seeing recon vids of the same kind of feats. Colbert took notice of their alert and quickly made the flames disappear. "My apologies, I did not mean to be so provocative but that is how our magic works, you must refer to your magic in a different way I suppose."

"And the girls can do this too?" Lasky asked gesturing to the students who were raptly listening to the conversation.

"Yes, they are all of noble blood and possess the ability of magic."

The redhead named Kirche smirked, "Well technically the Zero over here has no magical talent whatsoever." Louise fixed a glare at the girl and looked like she wanted to have an outburst.

Lasky gave this Kirche girl a stern look. "I don't know what the deal between the two of you is but now is not the most appropriate of times for this, you should act as noble as you claim to be." Kirche looked away embarrassed and Colbert nodded his head in thanks for Lasky chastising the young woman for him. Lasky addressed Louise next, "Don't let things like that bother you, I don't know much about your people's abilities but I'm sure yours will emerge once you grow a little older like the big girls," Lasky addressed Louise thinking she was much younger than she actually was. Kirche started snickering despite being berated and Louise exploded into a rage.

"Why you… h-how dare you call me a flat chested little girl," she picked up her wand and pointed it in Lasky's direction. Before Colbert could stop her the Spartans present rushed forward at incredible speeds and stopped her themselves. Louise squeaked as one of them roughly took hold of her palm forcing her to drop her wand, the others including the marines and troopers had Louise squared away in their gun sights. Lasky for his part remained where he was and looked unfazed and calm albeit confused about being accused of calling her 'flat chested'.

"Louise! What are you thinking, I told you all to keep level heads during this meeting and this is most certainly not how nobles should be representing Tristain! Captain I apologize for her actions," Colbert bowed slightly towards Lasky.

"Soldiers stand down," Lasky ordered, the troopers and Spartans slowly complied and lowered their weapons but DeMarco kept a firm grip on Louise's wrist. "DeMarco…" Lasky warned, DeMarco reluctantly released the girl's hand and backed away.

"I-I-I'm sorry Captain, I let myself get carried away in a unladylike manner," Louise apologized while clutching her wrist, "I am actually 16 years of age and I get a very sensitive about my body not reflecting so."

"Well I suppose it was rather rude of me to assume your age but a situation like this," Lasky gestured around himself reminding Louise that she was surrounding by armed soldiers, "is not the best time to lose your temper like that." Louise looked down red faced. "Look," Lasky spoke quietly and directly to her, "I know what's it's like to be bullied at your age but you'll go far if you keep a level head and not let them bother you. You'll avoid a lot of problems that way." Louise looked up at him and nodded weakly, feeling somewhat better that the Captain was so underdtanding.

Colbert attempted to change the subject from Louise attempting to assault a foreign naval captain, "I believe the most important thing we need to discuss is the manner in which you were brought here, we may actually know." Lasky and the soldiers perked up at this information and the captain motioned for him to continue. "Well you see yesterday was an event we call the familiar summoning ceremony, it is a traditional event in which young aspiring mages summon familiars to act as life partners throughout their careers as mages and nobles."

Lasky scratched his chin thoughtfully, "And this is done using this magic of yours I assume?" Colbert nodded. "So this has to do with us, how?" Lasky already had a sneaking suspicion of what the answer would be.

"Yes that is correct, a mage uses their magic to summon a creature as their servant. Now during yesterday's events Louise here attempted to summon her familiar with seemingly no success, shortly afterwards however, your ships appeared suddenly from the sky and landed in our country."

Lasky fully got the message, his expression hardened. "So you believe that every sailor and soldier in our battle group are this girl's 'familiar'?"

"It is just a theory but all signs point to it being so," Colbert responded.

"I don't believe I'll have to tell you twice that any soldier in the UNSC will not be servants to anyone, correct?"

"Of course! We would never try to do such a thing to nobles such as yourselves, when you meet with the crown I'm sure we can work out a solution to this dilemma in more detail."

Before Lasky could comment on being called a 'noble' an ODST trooper radioed in an alert to everyone present. "**We've got some new unknown contacts on the motion sensors, they're moving our way!**"

"Colbert! Did you bring reinforcements of any kind with you!?" Lasky demanded an answer out of the academy professor as the other soldiers tensed up.

"No sir Captain, I have no idea what-" He suddenly seemed to remember something important.

"What is it Professor, what's going on here!?"

* * *

Colbert was so preoccupied by everything that was going on he failed to notice that they had wandered into the black forest and that this 'UNSC' ship had crashed landed in an area usually infested with…

There was a series of loud roars from the deep inside the forest.

"Orcs!" Colbert shouted.

"Orcs!?" Laky shouted back in question.

"Orcs are a feral beast people who live in the deep forests and kill human travelers or raid small villages, not exactly friendly. They must have cleared out when you landed here but now they must want their turf back, girls, get ready." Louise, Kirche, and Tabitha quickly picked up their wands and readied themselves. Lasky drew his odd looking pistol and pointed it towards the trees around them.

"Spartans, marines, prepare for contact!" the captain shouted out. The so called Spartans and marines readied their weapons yet again at the foliage around themselves.

There was a sudden series of gunshots in the distance deeper inside the forest, "_I didn't think he had so many of his strange musketeers fielded already, what an incredible display of volley fire,_" Colbert thought.

"The next checkpoint to our north reports they've engaged hostile contacts Captain Lasky, we have imminent contacts inbound ourselves. Motion tracker's lighting up." The golem knight named DeMarco, though now identified as whatever a Spartan is supposed to be, informed his commanding officer.

"Colbert grab the kids and get them in cover now!" Lasky grabbed Louise whom was closest to him and dragged her to the barricades blocking the road, Louise was rather flustered and confused at this. Colbert and the other girls complied and joined them behind the cover each one of them pointing their wands down the road.

"Contact!" a marine yelled as the first few orcs barreled out of the trees and charged down the road with crude weapons in hand.

"Captain, when your men fire off their first volley it would be best if they-" Colbert was cut off when Lasky shouted an order.

"Open fire!" To shock of the four mages every UNSC solider let loose a salvo of repeated gunfire revealing that their muskets were none like any they have ever seen. To say they were amazed at these seemingly magic muskets capable of firing so many times was an understatement. The orcs crumpled to the ground under the accurate and withering gunfire before they could get anywhere near the UNSC forces.

"Hold steady men more incoming!" the Spartan leader barked and just as he said a rather large horde of orcs emerged from the tree line and charged them. Seeing the sheer number of attacking beasts the mages helped out by firing off their own attacks. Colbert and Kirche both shot out a fireball spell which burned the first few orcs to a crisp while Tabitha summoned ice blades that beheaded several orcs at once, Louise tried a fire spell that merely ended up as an explosion that sent three orcs flying; one of which cracked its skull on a tree from the force. A pair of orcs got in close but were both tackled by Flame and Slyphid who quickly and messily devoured them. It was the soldier's turn to be impressed as they all briefly turned to look at the four mages before opening fire again, Lasky noted the combat capabilities of their magic and the mages.

"Captain, your men will be overrun here perhaps we should fallback!" Colbert voiced his concern as the onslaught of orcs just kept coming.

"Don't worry Colbert, these things are nothing," the four mages watched amazed as Lasky stood and fired his pistol several times dropping multiple orcs as their heads seemed to spontaneously explode. When his weapon ran dry he touched his ear and used their strange foreign magic to contact his soldiers, "Someone open up with that warthog already would you!" Tabitha turned and noticed the odd contraption on the magic horseless carriage from before spin up and fire revealing it to have been another type of weird firesrm. Amongst the sound of the other soldier's personal weapons firing the weapon of the so called warthog thundered from behind them and a mind boggling amount of gun fire raked over the orcs ripping holes into their lines and making their body's fall apart in a most gruesome way. The mages stopped using spells as they noticed that their assistance was in no way needed, the strange and unknown weapons of these UNSC forces were wreaking utter havoc. Several loud bangs rang out as the soldiers threw some type of fuse less bombs at the orcs which blasted them into a bloody mist. Once again the orcs proved no match and the last of them were dispatched leaving a massive pile of their mangled bodies in the road and surrounding forest floor. The killing efficiency of the Spartans and marines was remarkable and if Colbert had to gauge each of their strengths he would say that their weapons made even their basic looking soldiers, the marines, as capable in combat as line or triangle class mages at best, the Spartans even more so.

"All clear, no bravos in sight!" a Spartan shouted.

"No more contacts sir!"

"All clear over here too, nothing moving!"

Lasky gave the Spartans a new order, "DeMarco take your team and sweep down the road then hightail it back here!"

"Aye Aye sir!" DeMarco affirmed and he and his team moved out cautiously creeping down the road with their magic muskets up and ready.

Lasky turned back to the mages and inquired about their wellbeing, "Are you four alright?"

Colbert took a moment before answering, "Yes thank you. That display of firepower was incredible Captain Lasky, I've never seen anything like your weapons before."

"We'll explain more about our technology during our next more formal meeting, for now you four sit tight here until the fighting ceases." In the distance muffled and rapid pops of gunfire could still be heard revealing that more UNSC forces were still fighting. Lasky used his communication magic again to get in contact with someone not present. "Palmer what's your status? …Understood, we've dealt with the contacts here, nothing left… right, get it done Spartan. Lasky out." Lasky gave Colbert a nod before leaving the mages by themselves to go investigate the orc bodies with his marines.

"Well this little meeting escalated quickly huh?" Kirche said trying to lighten the mood, no one said anything. Professor Colbert was studying the warthog seemingly lost in thought, Tabitha was intently watching the movements of the marines and special troopers that arrived with Lasky, and Louise was just staring expressionless at the pile of dead orcs and marines picking through them with her arms limp at her sides. "Oh, alright…" Kirche muttered and sat down quietly on the sandbags, "_At least these marine guys look like handsome young men,_" she thought while contemplating hitting on some of them.

* * *

**Halkeginia, Tristain 2558**

**UNSC Infinity crash site area, checkpoint Alpha-2**

"Keep up the fire marines!" Spartan commander Palmer was behind a barricade set up in the abandoned logging camp taking out the contacts Captain Lasky called orcs with ease. "Keating, how're you holding up over there!?"

Keating, who was manning a tripod mounted HMG, replied, "We're alright over here Commander, these things are like brutes with no armor or spikers, easy pickings!" Other marines continued to take aim at the aggressive green skinned pig nosed creatures and dispatch them with ease with a mix of ARs, BRs, and DMRs. Palmer noticed on her motion sensor that one of them managed to slip in close to their lines.

"Marine watch out!" she yelled but was too late. One of the orcs burst through the foliage and used its primitive stone axe to slam the surprised marine she was trying to warn. The stone axe head exploded into pieces when it made contact with the marine's titanium armor chest plate and sent the soldier reeling back with a pained yell. The dumb creature paused to contemplate how its weapon broke so easily and was downed by a quick burst of gun fire. Palmer rushed to the downed marine and called for help. "Corpsman! Corpsman over here now!"

A corpsman wasted no time and inspected the damage with his diagnostics tool, "You're gonna be alright Locklear you only a single cracked rib, only other damage here is a small dent on your chest plate."

Locklear coughed for a bit before replying, "Thanks doc, fucking thing knocked the breath right out of me though. God damn they hit as hard as brutes."

"Just stay here until you're ready to move soldier," just then her radio flared up with a message.

"**Alpha two actual this is Ugly three one,**" an AV-14 pilot called out over the net.

"This is Alpha two one, send it!"

"**You've got a flight of two hornets inbound to your position, need some guidance on what to engage down there over.**"

"Affirm, everything east of the red smoke is hostile," Palmer primed a red smoke grenade and tossed it near the barricades the rest of the men were fighting at.

"**We have your smoke, rollin' in.**" The two hornets roared overhead and laid down a devastating spray of autocannon rounds stopping the orc's assault and wiping the rest of them out.

"Cease fire!" Palmer ordered the remaining marines who were still discharging their weapons. She got on her radio and contacted Lasky again. "Captain Lasky, Palmer here, all hostiles eliminated sir."

"**Copy that Palmer, have some of your Spartan teams sweep the area, I already have Majestic doing the same.**"

"Aye Aye sir, Palmer out. _This turned out to be a pretty interesting day after all,_" she thought.

* * *

Lasky was poking around the bodies of the dead hostile orcs with a pair of ODSTs at his flanks just in case one of them was still kicking. The creatures were bipedal pig men of some sort with green skin and some semblance of intelligent thought process based on their crude hide armor and stone weapons. "_The only thing that makes the average brute soldier better than these things are plasma weapons and better armor,_" he thought. Palmer had just finished informing him that the battle over at her checkpoint had finished and the only thing that could be heard now was whining engines from various sources and the occasional burst of gunfire.

Just then Majestic came back from their area sweep, "Area up ahead is clear Captain, no contacts in sight," team leader DeMarco gave a report on their findings.

Lasky looked to the four Tristainians who were still taking in the sights of the various marine activities going on, "Shard work DeMarco, you guys hold tight here while I go talk with our new friends."

"Aye Aye sir," DeMarco saluted and returned to his other Spartans.

Walking over to the mages as they were called Lasky greeted them, "How're you folks holding up? Bet you want to head back home right about now."

"Yes we most certainly should," Colbert replied, "everyone in the academy must be worried sick after all that fighting they had no doubt heard."

"No horses," Tabitha pointed out. Indeed their horses had been spooked by the fighting and ran off somewhere.

"Yes I already took notice of that so I'll provide you with a ride home if you don't mind," a M831 TT, or troop hog, rolled up to the roadblock, "This hog will get you all home in no time."

Colbert's mood brightened up at having the chance to ride in the horseless carriage, "Much appreciated Captain, many thanks."

"I uhh, I don't know about this," Louise was a little intimidated by the loud rumbling carriage.

Kirche pushed her forward giving her no choice, "Come on little Louise it'll be fun!"

"Flying," Tabitha informed everyone present as she mounted Slyphid who was slightly engorged on orc flesh.

Lasky smirked, "That's alright then, but do us a favor would you," Tabitha stared blankly at him, "next time you want to fly over and say hi could you give us a heads up? We don't want to have to send cannon rounds at you again."

Tabitha quickly looked away from him, not liking being reminded of her foolish decision, and nodded her head before taking off.

"We'll be waiting on you to set up a meeting with your country's leadership professor, when it's done just come here and let us know when and where." Lasky helped Colbert climb into the warthog while the marine driver helped Kirche and a shivering Louise strap in.

Once everyone was secure the driver and passenger got back in their seats and set off down the road, behind them Lasky gave a wave.

* * *

The warthog ride was yet another shock to the mages of Halkeginia, it was an incredibly fast carriage that got them back to the academy in less than half the time it would have galloping full sprint on horse. Tabitha followed in the air close behind and Flame was cramped into the rear cab as best the fire salamander could fit. Colbert and Kirche were clearly enjoying the ride but Louise was stiff as a board and drained of any color. As they neared the academy gates the driver slowed down as the headmaster and a line of professors and guards stood waiting for them with wands and swords drawn. "Hey back there, you might want to let them know we're friendly!" the driver shouted.

Seeing a possible misunderstanding happening Colbert quickly got up in his seat and waved his arms so that he could be seen, upon seeing him the group of mages relaxed somewhat. The warthog pulled up slowly and came to a stop a few meters from the gates and waiting mages. The marine passenger jumped out and began helping the mages in back unfasten themselves, he grumbled disapprovingly when Flame licked his face causing Kirche to start snickering. When Louise was unbuckled she remained frozen in her seat. "Is she gonna be alright?" the marine asked.

Kirche frowned, "Hey Louise come on we're home. Louise?" She tried to tug the girl out of her seat and Louise bolted out and clasped herself around Kirche, arms around her neck and legs wrapped around her waist. A surprised and flustered Kirche found herself holding onto a stiff and frightened Louise and inadvertently bobbing her up and down like one would a frightened toddler. "Ummm…"

Colbert ignored them and proceeded to thank the marines, "Thank you gentlemen, please inform your captain that the crown will have a meeting place and time as soon as possible." The marines nodded and sped off back down the road even faster than what they were going before as their carriage roared. Turning around Colbert noted that they the headmaster and other professors were waiting anxiously for them to come inside and explain things, even more so given their arrival in a magic horseless carriage being driven by strange foreign soldiers. Up in the windows of the academy building he could tell that the girls had quite a night ahead of them too as many curious faces were jamming themselves into every window facing the entrance. "Let us head inside ladies," was all he said before striding forward to the waiting interrogation of the headmaster and his peers.

* * *

**Halkeginia, Tristain 2558**

**Tristain Academy of Magic, central tower.**

Night had fallen once again and Louise finally had a moment to herself in her room. As soon as they returned they had been questioned thoroughly by the headmaster and the other professors, even now their meeting had not ended and poor Mr. Colbert was the center of attention. Also they had already sent a message to the capitol detailing everything that happened at their first meeting, the queen no doubt was worried about the sound of musket and cannon fire. Unfortunately Colbert remembered how she and Kirche had acted and assured that they would not escape punishment. "_Damnable Zerbst woman…_" she angrily thought, following her reaction to the carriage ride Kirche had fancied calling herself 'Mama Kirche' around Louise and wouldn't stop bringing up how afraid she was. She didn't care though, she absolutely did not want to get back on one of those crazy contraptions again for any reason whatsoever. As soon as they got back to the main building they were attacked by swarms of curious students who wanted to know what happened and what the huge battle was about, Louise had slipped out of the dining hall leaving Kirche alone to be interrogated , that made her feel better at least. Tabitha had more common sense than to stick around and be swamped by a crowd of students and disappeared somewhere to read in peace. Looking out her window Louise reflected on the day's events as she watched the glowing ships floating in the sky. She still couldn't believe that she could have summoned such things, and even if she did that Captain Lasky fellow made it clear that they would not be made familiars.

There was occasionally a bright flash and loud bang from one of the smaller ships as their cannons took potshots at what must have been lost and confused orc stragglers in the woods and the forest would flash bright momentarily. She had been standing at the window watching the display in awe, as most of the other students not questioning Kirche were doing so as well. One thing made Louise feel better though, a meeting between these UNSC people and the crown would most likely involve her and that would mean she would have a chance to see her oldest and best friend. Princess Henrietta. "_Henrietta… I hope I haven't made things even more stressing for you,_" she thought while continuing to stare out the window. Another series of flashes, bangs, and thuds were all that filled the air that night.


End file.
